My bug fighting kit

Weeks and weeks ago I planted a round of sunflowers and hollyhocks against the fence... and some buggers ate over half of them :X I was not impressed! So disappointing, to put all those hopes and sunflower dreams into the ground and have them disappear into insect bellies virtually overnight. Luckily for me, I had more on the go to put in at a later date. I got my gear together, and I was more organised this time. I have experience with this after the earwig epidemic in my garden last year.

I had sweet soy sauce (Kecap Manis), cheap vegetable oil, and a bottle of ultra-light beer I found left in the back of the fridge after a party. Do snails like light beer? I hope so!


I also had a little stash of recycled tins and plastic containers. I would have liked to have more but I only remembered to start saving them up earlier in the week.


I use the containers, the beer, the soy sauce and the oil to make insect traps. Here's a photo of one of my efforts last year. I can't say for sure if they actually kept the insects away from my plants, but they certainly attracted a lot of bugs who fell to sticky - and beery - ends.


If you've never tried this before, all you do is bury your container with the opening flush with the top of the soil and add a good splash of beer, oil, soy sauce, or a mix of all the above and then sit back and wait. Every so often you tip out the bug soup and top it up again with fresh attracting gloop (be warned, bug soup stinks).

I now have a row of insect traps all the way along the fence, each about two feet apart, with my seedlings all planted nearby. I planted out a second round of butternut pumpkins today too (the first were also eaten) and I am so keen for them to survive the hoards that I have a beer trap, and an oil/soy trap for three seedlings.

So good luck, new sunflowers (Giant Russians and a solitary Prado Red);


Best wishes, hollyhocks;


Thinking of you, my coriander and dill.


I would have liked these babies to be a little bigger and more resistant to attack before I planted them out, but we are off on a month long holiday in only 10 days and so it was now or never. Pleasepleaseplease let them not be eaten this time!

Earwiggy update

A quick update on the pest 'situation.'

My traps are most definitely attracting a whole assortment of insects! The earwigs are stuck on the bottom of the tins among slater beetles and millipedes and bloated grey slugs. Cue evil laugh... Actually, it's quite revolting but strangely gratifying to see how much has fallen into the traps. I think it will need a little more time to see if it's actually working to protect my plants or not. The best way will probably be to buy something cool and expensive and plant it somewhere especially vulnerable, with a trap strategically nearby, and see if it survives.

The Earwig Post.

So 'something' or 'somethings' are eating my plants. I don't think it's slugs or snails, because although I do see them around there are rarely any silver trails on the plants. My carrot seedlings barely saw the light of day before they were all gone; pooh. The rhubarb, which has been hanging on gamely since it was planted, currently has the most amount of leaf I have seen on it since it was bought from the nursery, and it looks quite sad indeed.


My other, fancier, 'Sydney Crimson' Rhubarb has been enjoyed more by the bugs than I can ever see us enjoying it.

Beans have been left as mere stalks in the ground. This is one of the survivors.


And my raspberries, my poor harassed raspberries! Just as they were starting to look OK, some little sod has come along and eaten almost all of it.


So, who are the culprits? My mum suggested earwigs, and I have seen them about in the garden, although not in enormous numbers. I did some googling and reading, and they are currently top of the list of suspects. Apparently they are scavengers, omnivorous, and have a particular fancy for seedlings. They like to live in damp and shaded areas... like under pea straw mulch, perhaps?!

There are a number of ways of controlling them, for example you can roll up newspapers and leave them overnight. They'll lurk in there, and in the morning you take them and burn the lot, or shake them out into soapy water. However I have opted for another method of control: the beer can buried with it's top level to the ground, and one third full of beer. The earwigs (and slugs and snails for that matter) are attracted to the beer, fall in and drown. I've also popped a couple of bean cans about the place, with a bit of Kecap Manis and canola oil in them. The KM being my version of 'soya sauce and molasses' which I've read about. Let's hope it works, and my pests have some South Australian loyalty and a taste for Dr Tims; I'd like to see at least a few carrots this year!