roly-polys are after the stems of my zucchini, and I was considering anew treatment. Flower water paste with a couple of drops of Dawn dish soap in it. paint it on so it hardens and makes a non-tasty bandaid. Anyone try this before?
Sow bugs chewing stems of squash.
It sounds like it could work, also if you have wood ashes scatter some around the base of plants, I know that works.
Well that flunked. I didn't mind the tiny black ants eating at the flour, but the sowbugs renewed their attack this morning. Guess tying stockings around stems might work, anything else will wash off with watering.
Didn't have any clean woodash, it's all in the chicken coop and has some de in it at minimum...
I use Sluggo Plus and it works. You can also try coarsely broken up egg shells.
just changing from watering in the evening to watering late morning, and the chicken coop wood ashes seem to have helped, I'm no longer losing plants and I don't see sowbugs. It is more convenient to water in the evening, but if I have a better survival rate in morning, I'll take it.
When your plants get bigger the roly ploys won't be able to hurt them and you cant go back to watering in the evening. After the rain today the sow bugs are everywhere.
Rain? I keep hoping. My zuccchini is big,. stem an inch in diameter, but they were rapidly reducing that to half inch before I tied stockings around it and changed watering time.
Wow, I have dealt with them before even tho I was told they only eat decaying plant material. They loved my seedlings and were quickly turning them into decaying plant material. I'm glad you found something that worked and is so simple.
cinnamon worked on mine...
I can go with the wood ashes around them ‘weed. Many bugs don't like crawling across them, I have noticed. Also, they add good things to the soil, I believe.
Throughout the winter when we "take the ashes out", we save them in 5 gal buckets. End of winter, we are well-armed for the inexorable summer bug wars.
Periodically, Gypsi, I also dump a small pile in the chicken house. I didn’t get the “de in it at minimum. . .” No wood ashes, consider DE, diatomaceous earth. Is that the “de” you were referring to?
I’m trying to make some decisions about sow bugs. I’ve seen them hanging around struggling plants, but have never caught them in a destructive act–I might not be recognizing the act. I read good things and bad things about them which is the way it is with many creatures, even us.
If pill bugs run out of decaying matter, they will skeletonize a living plant. Especially if there is a cool dark damp area around the bottom of the plant. Too much wood ash changes the ph of your soil, but fertilizer can be used to rebalance it. You did see them accurately.
DE was indeed diatomaceous earth. Any idea what the pH of wood ash is? I still only have ph kits that test water.
I put down beneficial nematodes in the garden yesterday evening. We have a cool spell coming, I don't know if they eat sowbugs but they definitely eat fire ants and I had a hill of those, and another of pharoahs, and my 3000 lbs of compost is probably where the excess sowbugs are coming from. I cleared a new area and stirred in 640 lbs of compost (if those bags really weighed 80 lbs and I think they did) yesterday.
Just watering in the morning did wonders, I haven't lost a cucumber plant since, and they were being decimated. I didn't even use woodash around their bases.