Help! Earwigs are taking over

Earwigs are ruining my garden! They love my Shasta Daisies, eating the yellow center, resulting in ugly deformed flowers. They are also eating my zinnias in containers. I have been out every night, knocking them into a container of water, since I don't like to use chemicals. Last night I sprayed some insecticidal soap on them. Question is will that kill them, or did the spray just knock them to the ground? Directions on the bottle says to thoroughly wet entire plant, even under surface of leaves. My daisies take up a 4X5' area in the garden, so I think I would need gallons of the stuff doing it that way. I've tried small dishes with water/soy sauce, since I heard that would work, but didn't catch very many.

G'Day
You might like to look at this link that I posted last night.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1111474/
Brian

Brian:
Thanks for the suggestion. Think I'll try to put out some bowls tonight. Did try veggie oil with soy sauce in a little cup, but the ants got to it first and took over, nearly burying the whole thing! Guess I had the lip of the cup too close to the soil. I'll try to find a bowl with a rim.
E

I am so glad you posted this thread ! I have these little pest all over the place but didn,t know what they were. This is the worst I have ever had them this year , we have had a lot of rain I even had them in my house and they have never been there before.
now I know what is eating my plants. I am going to try the oil in the bowl .

You can also roll up newspaper and place it on the ground in the evenings. They will hide in them when the sun comes up. In the morning toss the paper with the earwigs in it -- tie it up in a plastic bag or dump out the earwigs and kill them. Just another way to deal with the little buggers.

Ack! My clematis looked terrible too!
The soy sauce and oil works. I put it in a sour cream container punched a few holes about half way up, put the lid on and placed it under the clematis leaves for shade. Next day, it was full of those stupid earwigs!

Glad that worked for you. Leave the container out until it is full or the oil goes rancid/I found it can be left out for several weeks and eventually the Earwig numbers are so low that they cause no noticeable damage.
Brian

Guess shasta daisies are on the menu this year. Everytime I see a bud about to open, if I peak in behind the petals, sure enough a little bugger is hiding out in there. I learned the hard way to get them out fast... if I don't the blooms end up wrecked.

Brian:
You say to leave the container out for awhile, but what happens when it rains? I put out little plastic bowls with oil, but then it rains and they fill with water. I've had more luck with insecticidal soap spray - last night I sprayed only 90 earwigs instead of the usual 150+. Guess I'm making a small dent in the population!

G'Day
Sorry never thought of that being a problem as we usually only get small amounts of rain at a time and any water in the bowl only lifts the oil up closer to the top. Perhaps you should use a larger container with the oil further from the top. Or even the soup bowl but only 1/4 full of oil. The other answer of course is to put a cover above the bowl like an umbrella.
Brian

Another good idea is to half fill a small plant pot with shredded paper, place this upside down onto a garden cane and stick several of these along the borders etc, every evening the earwigs crawl into the pot to hide snug and warm all day till next evenings rampage, however, you go out each day with a bucket of water and empty the shredded paper / earwigs into the bucket, cover with a tight lid, (FOOD FILM) they drown and you smile like hell, or Burn paper / earwigs in metal container, same results, same happy smile, good luck WeeNel.

Put out 3 bowls last night (before the rain) and only got one big slug - no earwigs. Will keep trying various methods - I like the sour cream container with the lid on and holes punched in the sides. Pretty soon my garden is going to be full of various traps! I guess I'll consider a new type of garden decor!

Earwigs!!! Found a bunch this eve...so has anyone tried diatomaceous earth? The bottle I have, well, I've been using it for slugs and I think I made a dent in their population. But as I was reading it, it says that you can use it on earwigs too. Anybody out there use this stuff for earwigs?

Can someone post a picture of a earwig. I might have them because something is eating my mums blooms.

One more pest to add to my list of crap to deal with this year! The population in my garden has quadrupled since last year and it seems EVERYTHING I planted is on their menu! Squash, tomatoes, basil, french sorrel these seem to be favorites) to name a few. Everytime I pull a weed that's sprouted near a plant, at least 15 of them come out of hiding. I want to try the dish soap method but am afraid of what it will do to my plants. Birds love them so I purchased a bird feeder and staked it smack dab in the middle of my garden. After a couple of days, so far so good.....

G'Day
This is a link to Earwigs in the bug files.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/showimage/858/
Brian