My Butterfly Bush is under an attack by earwigs. At night I go out
with a flashlight to find nearly every single leaf being munched on by
a marauding earwig. Looking for organic retalliation, I read here
that a tuna can of cooking oil will lure the earwigs to their death.
I tried this remedy with Peanut oil, yet not one single earwig has
taken the nosedive o' death in the pool of oil. Does peanut oil just
not work? Should I be using corn oil instead, or seek another
solution?

I had a horrible earwig problem in my dahlias one year in Seattle. A man who
was a volunteer for Seattle Tilth told me to cut pieces of corrugated
cardboard from a box, about 4X10 or there abouts, and dampen it and then lay
it on the ground next to the plants, in the morning you can check these and
they will be full of earwigs, they crawl into the damp little tunnels for
the daytime, and you can dispose of them accordingly. It took about a week
of this and the earwigs were finally pretty much gone. It's worth a try to
see if that will work for you.

I had tried the beer dish to get rid of slugs and that used to catch quite a
few earwigs too but I drowned more big black wood beetles than slugs and
earwigs combined so I quite that. Those big black beetles LOVE baby slugs
and slug and earwig eggs.

I just dug out my old Rodale's Garden Insect book and looked up what they
recommend. It says the natural predator for earwigs is the Tachnid Fly. You
can attract these insects by planting herbs in the Umbelliferea family,
parsley, dill, Queen Anne's Lace, and letting them flower. I don't know if
you can buy these as a beneficial insect from a supplier or not. I hope
these suggestions and information help you some.

Val


"Fleemo" wrote in message
om...
My Butterfly Bush is under an attack by earwigs. At night I go out
with a flashlight to find nearly every single leaf being munched on by
a marauding earwig. Looking for organic retalliation, I read here
that a tuna can of cooking oil will lure the earwigs to their death.
I tried this remedy with Peanut oil, yet not one single earwig has
taken the nosedive o' death in the pool of oil. Does peanut oil just
not work? Should I be using corn oil instead, or seek another
solution?

On Mon, 28 Apr 2003 12:08:10 -0700, Fleemo wrote:

My Butterfly Bush is under an attack by earwigs. At night I go out with a
flashlight to find nearly every single leaf being munched on by a
marauding earwig. Looking for organic retalliation, I read here that a
tuna can of cooking oil will lure the earwigs to their death. I tried this
remedy with Peanut oil, yet not one single earwig has taken the nosedive
o' death in the pool of oil. Does peanut oil just not work? Should I be
using corn oil instead, or seek another solution?

Two organic methods that I know work are these:

1 take a newspaper and loosly roll it up. Secure it with a rubber band.
Get it wet with the hose/ bucket. Try not to soak it too much, your
looking for moist. Leave these at the base of the buddlea and remove them
every afternoon to the trash can.

2 get old rags, pantyhose or even duct tape and some tangle foot from the
garden center. Tie the rags, pantyhose, tape to the base of the shrub.
Smear the tangle foot on the rags..ect, and do use a good deal of it. When
the insects attempt to climb the shrub, they will get traped. Remove the
rags..ect when full.
Btw (by the way..), if you find the tangle foot is not easy to get out of
it's container or it's not easy to spread, then microwave it for a couple
of seconds. It will be a bit thinner to spread.

Good luck
--
http://yard-works.netfirms.com

Joyce wrote in message ...
Last summer my butterfly bush was under invasion by pesky earwigs. I
filled a tuna can with vegetable oil. I put it out about 10 p.m. and by
morning I had probably 200 dead earwigs in the oil. I was stunned that
this worked so well. I saw very few earwigs the rest of the summer on
my plant. I've never seen anything work so immediately - maybe it was
the kind of oil - I don't really know. I would definitely try it again
using vegetable oil.

Joyce

Timothy wrote:
On Mon, 28 Apr 2003 12:08:10 -0700, Fleemo wrote:


My Butterfly Bush is under an attack by earwigs. At night I go out with a
flashlight to find nearly every single leaf being munched on by a
marauding earwig. Looking for organic retalliation, I read here that a
tuna can of cooking oil will lure the earwigs to their death. I tried this
remedy with Peanut oil, yet not one single earwig has taken the nosedive
o' death in the pool of oil. Does peanut oil just not work? Should I be
using corn oil instead, or seek another solution?


Two organic methods that I know work are these:

1 take a newspaper and loosly roll it up. Secure it with a rubber band.
Get it wet with the hose/ bucket. Try not to soak it too much, your
looking for moist. Leave these at the base of the buddlea and remove them
every afternoon to the trash can.

2 get old rags, pantyhose or even duct tape and some tangle foot from the
garden center. Tie the rags, pantyhose, tape to the base of the shrub.
Smear the tangle foot on the rags..ect, and do use a good deal of it. When
the insects attempt to climb the shrub, they will get traped. Remove the
rags..ect when full.
Btw (by the way..), if you find the tangle foot is not easy to get out of
it's container or it's not easy to spread, then microwave it for a couple
of seconds. It will be a bit thinner to spread.

Good luck

Thanks for the input here folks. Perhaps I'll try a combination of
vegetable oil and cardboard. A double whammy!

-Fleemo

Try a cheaper vegetable oil, floated on top of a splash of soy sauce.

Or, go out there at night and hit them directly with insecticidal soap. It kills
them very quickly. Also hunt around by day for their hiding places, and hit
those with insecticidal soap.

One foot pieces of plastic water pipe laid down in the mulch can trap them.
Tap the pipe into a bucket with soapy water to knock the earwigs out and
kill them. (Dampen them before you lay them out.)

Last night I tried Canola oil (hey, what can I say, I try and eat
healthy!) but still got the same disappointing result. Zero
particpants in the swimming pool o' doom.

I'll move on to the cardboard, the hose, and the soap tonight. These
little buggers are decimating my Butterfly Bush, not to mention my
Hollyhocks!

Thanks for the suggestions.

-Fleemo

(Pat Kiewicz) wrote in message ...
Fleemo said:

Last night I tried Canola oil (hey, what can I say, I try and eat
healthy!) but still got the same disappointing result. Zero
particpants in the swimming pool o' doom.

Did you float the oil above some soy sauce? For some reason,
soy sauce seems to attract earwigs -- at least, in my experience.

I'll have to try the soy sauce tonight. Last night's efforts of using
the corrugated cardboard, plastic hose, and two kinds of oil resulted
in ZERO earwigs! Zero! Maybe these pesky guys have been reading this
newsgroup and are on to us!

(Fleemo) wrote in message . com...
(Pat Kiewicz) wrote in message ...
Fleemo said:

Last night I tried Canola oil (hey, what can I say, I try and eat
healthy!) but still got the same disappointing result. Zero
particpants in the swimming pool o' doom.

Did you float the oil above some soy sauce? For some reason,
soy sauce seems to attract earwigs -- at least, in my experience.

I'll have to try the soy sauce tonight. Last night's efforts of using
the corrugated cardboard, plastic hose, and two kinds of oil resulted
in ZERO earwigs! Zero! Maybe these pesky guys have been reading this
newsgroup and are on to us!

Well, it may be time to bring in the big guns. I got three, count 'em
three earwigs using the oil and soy sauce trick, the corrugated
cardboard trick, and the plastic hose trick. I'll give diatomacious
earth a try next, though I hate the look it gives the garden.