Attack of the Earwigs

I keep getting asked for updated photos of my garden projects, and now I’m kicking myself that I didn’t take them a few days ago. Because now we are under attack by that filthy disgusting Dermaptera known as the earwig.

I can remember an era before the European earwig invasion. It was a simpler, less horrifying time.

That summer my mother’s delphiniums mysteriously died. She couldn’t figure out why. But when she cut off the dead dried-up flower stalks, earwigs poured out in the thousands. It was like an earwig fountain. Real life horror movie stuff.

Fast forward 20 years or so and my vegetable garden looks pretty swell. Then I started noticing something happened to my “Green Machine” melon seedlings.

melon problems

They started getting some yellowish spots and what looked like nibbles. I was concerned about powdery mildew, but quickly ruled that out. After hours of internet research, I determined that it was likely a bit of environmental stress (there had been a several day cold snap before the damage appeared) and perhaps a few nibbles from some critters. I lost 2 melon seedlings, but the two in the photo above are doing okay.

However, it’s been two weeks and now almost all of my bean plants have been munched away to nothingness:

bean1

This is one of about 2 or 3 bean plants that haven’t been completely annihilated:

bean2

This butternut squash plant looked awesome until about 3 days ago. All of that damage was done in about that amount of time:

butternut1

This is what the smaller, less robust butternut plants look like. I wish I had taken a photo of this plant yesterday because all of this damage was done last night:

butternut2

As you can see, something is causing significant damage. Healthy leaves are reduced to skeletons overnight. If I don’t figure out how to stop this quickly, I might not have a garden at all in a week.Read more…