393 Garden Pests - Whiteflies, Slugs, and More!

Farmer Fred and Debbie Flower share tips for managing pests like whiteflies and slugs, highlighting organic solutions and beneficial insects to help you reclaim your garden.

Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout. 

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Pictured: Whiteflies on a Citrus Leaf (Photo: Flickr/epitree)

Links:

“Beyond the Garden Basics” Newsletter  This week’s edition: Controlling Slugs in Mulch. By becoming a paid subscriber, you’re helping support the newsletter and this podcast. Thank You!

Dave Wilson Nursery https://www.davewilson.com/home-garden/

Plants That Attract Beneficial Insects

The Good Bug Hotel

Beneficial Insects for Whitefly Control

Whitefly Control Product - Bug Buster O

Sluggo for Snail and Slug Control

Sluggo Plus for Snail, slug, and earwig control

Other Slug/Snail Control Products

Earwig Control Tips from UCANR

All About Farmer Fred:
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Chapters

• 0:48 Whitefly Control Tips
• 13:11 Dave Wilson Nursery
• 15:24 Slug, Snail and Earwig Control Tips
• 30:30 Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter

Transcript

393 Controlling Garden Pests TRANSCRIPT

Farmer Fred:

[0:00] Today, we answer some of your spring and summer garden pest problems. Denise wants to know: “Last year my peppers were decimated by white flies. What can I do to prevent that from happening this year?”

 And from Texas, Erin says, “Howdy! I always hear you and Debbie Flower talking about mulching your garden area with arborist chips. How do you deter the slugs? I've done the mulching, but now my garden is infested.” 

Hmm, white flies, slugs. Heck, let's throw in a couple of other critters that leave similar damage. Snails and earwigs, too. It's episode 393 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, Garden Pest Control. 

We're podcasting from the Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon jungle in suburban purgatory, and we're brought to you today by Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go. 

WHITEFLY CONTROL TIPS (originally aired in Ep. 221)

Farmer Fred:

One pest that a lot of gardeners have, and it seems to be a lot in the shade, although they can happen in sunny gardens as well, are whiteflies. They're tiny sap-sucking insects that can get quite abundant in both vegetable and ornamental plantings, especially during warm weather. They excrete that honeydew that causes yellowing or the death of the leaves.

Outbreaks usually occur when either the plant is in the wrong place or there's a natural biological control disruption. Management is difficult once populations get high. Guess who's here? America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower, with more on white fly controls. White flies. Grr.

Debbie Flower:

[1:33] Yeah, there can be very frustrating.

Farmer Fred:

[1:35] Especially in a greenhouse.

Debbie Flower:

[1:36] Yes, especially in a greenhouse. Because the things that will eat them, the beneficial insects or the natural enemies aren't in the greenhouse. That can be solved. The predators and parasites that attack white flies can be purchased and released. And to do that, you need to contact an insectary. They are places that actually grow these insects and send them to you in a form that you can release in a situation like a greenhouse. Outdoors, releasing them is less effective because these beneficials can go wherever they want to go, maybe won't be as able to find the white fly population. But in a greenhouse, they can be very effective control.

Farmer Fred:

[2:13] And there are all sorts of different white flies as well. Once you get them, they are very tough to control.

Debbie Flower:

[2:19] They are. The best way to control them is to get their beneficials, which often means you have to put up with a population of white flies for a little while. There are grapes on the fence between myself and the house behind me, and they are not my grapes. They belong to the person behind me. And I was pruning them to keep them out of my walking space on my side of the fence. And they were full of whiteflies. And I did absolutely nothing because I knew that the beneficials then would be able to come in and attack the white flies and went. The way to get a good population of beneficials is to have what they eat there, which is the insect itself.

Farmer Fred:

[3:00] What are some of these garden good guys that can go after whiteflies?

Debbie Flower:

[3:03] Well, lacewings and lady beetles and the little tiny wasps are three that will go after the whiteflies. Whiteflies have what we call complete metamorphosis. So the adult lays an egg. The egg hatches into a larva, and the larva generally is a non-moving white blob on the underside of the leaf. It may have fringe around it, it may not. And then the larva goes into a pupal stage, which is in this blob place, and then it hatches and becomes an adult and flies away. White flies mate with each other, and the process starts all over again.

Farmer Fred:

[3:38] As we've talked about in the past, about having good bug hotels, someplace for the garden good guys to raise their young and have a meal that isn't a bug, you need to put in other plants. Now, you mentioned you could buy some of these good guys at an insectary, then release them. But you ought to have the plants established that they will want to stay in your yard.

Debbie Flower:

[3:58] Right. The good guys need to eat and they're going to need protein, which is going to be eating the white fly in the larval or pupal stage. But they also need some sugar, and that's what comes from the flowers and the plants that are nearby. So you need a population of those flowers nearby so that they can get a balanced diet.

Farmer Fred:

[4:16] Yeah, and as far as attracting lacewings, planting plants like yarrow or angelica, golden marguerite, cosmos, the queen anne's lace, fennel, and dandelions  will attract the good guys.

Debbie Flower:

[4:31] Have you seen those signs people put in their yard that say, I'm not growing weeds, I'm feeding the good guys, I'm feeding the insects?

Farmer Fred:

[4:37] Well, there's a whole other show we could do about the benefits of dandelions in a landscape. And if you have dandelions in your lawn, you should be thankful for that. It's improving the soil.

Debbie Flower:

[4:48] It's, yeah, they have that deep taproot.

Farmer Fred:

[4:50] Ladybugs, of course, need a home too. And we've talked about this before too, is the fact that if you buy ladybugs and release them, 95% of them, according to university studies, will fly away home. 

Debbie Flower:

[5:04] Mm-hmm. they're collected in dormancy. And their first instinct once they come out of dormancy is to fly like miles, like 25 miles.

Farmer Fred:

[5:13] Yeah. The ladybug, then, if you want to release them, maybe you need some plants where they may want to live. And one of the favorite habitats for ladybugs are ornamental grasses. They will overwinter in there.

Debbie Flower:

[5:27] Yes, down deep.

Farmer Fred:

[5:28] Yeah, in deer grass, muhlenbergia, things like that. So that's something to consider. Ladybugs also, besides some of the other plants that we've talked about that attract beneficials, the yarrow, bugleweed is a good one, coriander, California buckwheat. California buckwheat is one of my favorite California native plants for the number of beneficials it attracts.

Debbie Flower:

[5:48] There are many different California buckwheats, and they're all beneficial in that regard.

Farmer Fred:

[5:53] And what's nice about the California buckwheat, it has a bloom season here in California from May through December.

Debbie Flower:

[5:59] It's very long, yeah.

Farmer Fred:

[6:00] Yeah, and the flowers actually change color through the season, much like a sedum would do. It's always nice then to have those plants around so that you can raise your own ladybug population.

Debbie Flower:

[6:10] Or certainly feed the one that flew 25 miles from someplace else.

Farmer Fred:

[6:14] Yes. All right. Again, with whiteflies, much like with aphids, there are reflective mulches that might work.

Debbie Flower:

[6:20] Yes. Same thing. Yep.

Farmer Fred:

[6:21] Because it disorients them when they fly because they look down and they see a reflection of the sky. So they think, I'll just keep moving.

Debbie Flower:

[6:30] I'm not in the right place.

Farmer Fred:

[6:31] Yeah. How about ants and whiteflies? Are ants as big a problem for the gardener as far as herding whiteflies around as they are with herding aphids around?

Debbie Flower:

[6:40] I've seen ants way more on the aphids than on the whiteflies. Whiteflies, at least some of the species, as you said, there are many different whiteflies, produce honeydew, and the ants are attracted to that and will protect the whiteflies from what we call the good guys.

Farmer Fred:

[6:54] And again, a clean plant is a happy plant that attracts beneficials, so wash off your plants.

Debbie Flower:

[6:59] They don't like the dust, right, the beneficials.

Farmer Fred:

[7:01] Now, I remember one winter when I decided I'm going to grow tomatoes in the greenhouse for the winter because I don't want to buy supermarket tomatoes from November through May or June.

Debbie Flower:

[7:13] Were you successful?

Farmer Fred:

[7:15] Yes and no. For many reasons. The biggest problem growing a small determinate tomato in a greenhouse is the white flies. Yep. And it got to the point where there were just so many white flies, I'm going to get rid of those plants that attract the most white flies. And that's a strategy. You put them in the trash and then control the rest. And it got to the point in the greenhouse where to control the white flies, besides throwing out the most infested plants, I use an organic pyrethrin insecticide called Bug Buster O. it was organically registered. And the problem is being able to spray all portions of the plant. It has to be applied repeatedly in order for it to be effective, but it's still an ongoing battle.

Debbie Flower:

[8:05] Yes, it's tough to get the pesticide onto the whitefly because when you touch the plant or get near it, they fly away. So you want to do some of the, certainly the control on the other life stages.

Farmer Fred:

[8:17] I find it interesting that the pyrethrin insecticide is registered organic.

Debbie Flower:

[8:23] Well, pyrethrin is refined pyrethrum. Pyrethrum is collected from flowers.

Farmer Fred:

[8:31] Chrysanthemums.

Debbie Flower:

[8:31] Chrysanthemums, yes. And if you get pyrethrum, then you're getting the whole molecule. And if you're getting pyrethrin, you're getting a slightly refined extract of that, But they both work. They're both naturally occurring substances on the planet. And when they break down, they break it down into naturally occurring substances on the planet. If you get pyrethroid, ends in a D, you're getting one that's made in a lab and it will not break down into something that already exists on Earth.

Farmer Fred:

[9:01] And Bug Buster O, made by Monterey, is listed for control on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 lines of bad guys. That's a lot of pests. 

Debbie Flower:

[9:17]  Yeah, there's like eight or Nine pests listed on each of those 19 lines. So we're looking at 200 maybe?

Farmer Fred:

[9:22] Yeah, close to. I mean, white flies is down the list. They're under W. They're alphabetized. Yeah, aphids under A. So you got that. But Japanese beetles are on there, too. But again, you got to read and follow all label directions.

Debbie Flower:

[9:37] And if that little wasp is inside or is hovering around the white flies trying to find a nice pupal case to lay its eggs in, you will kill it as well with the pyrethrum.

Farmer Fred:

[9:47] Exactly. And bees as well should not be around when you're using it.

Debbie Flower:

[9:51] Yes, they're very sensitive to pyrethrum.

Farmer Fred:

[9:52] Yeah, I didn't have to worry about that in a greenhouse. But still, if you're using it outdoors... And, frankly, I think Bug Buster O is probably only meant for outdoor application. I don't know if it's registered for use indoors or not.

Debbie Flower:

[10:04] And that's a good point. Following the label includes using it where it says you can use it. If it says an indoor situation, then you can use it in a greenhouse. But if it does not say that or does not specify a greenhouse, specifically, it is illegal to apply it in a greenhouse.

Farmer Fred:

[10:20] In my defense, I used it probably 20 years ago for that purpose. Maybe it wasn't on the label then.

Debbie Flower:

[10:27] Or you took the plants out and treated them outdoors and then put them back in.

Farmer Fred:

[10:29] I like that. Okay. We'll run with that.

Debbie Flower:

[10:32] Okay. All right.

Farmer Fred:

[10:33] Yeah. White flies are tough. There's no doubt about it.

Debbie Flower:

[10:35] You can use a yellow sticky tab to monitor white flies as well as for aphids. And it also attracts thrips and fungus gnats and shore flies, several of the pests that we find annoying in the garden. But with white flies, it's pretty obvious. They fly into your face. Yeah. You kind of don't need to monitor that way, although it would help you monitor quantities. When I worked for Sacramento County Cooperative Extension, we had a huge, it was in the early 90s, a huge infestation of ash whitefly. So much so that people weren't able to picnic outside because there were so many whiteflies. And it's called ash whitefly because one of its places it hung out was on ash trees. And there are a number of ash trees in the local region. And so one of our jobs was to make a suction instrument. It was a bottle and it had two holes and a stopper in the top with two pieces of metal coming out. And you attach a tube like plastic tube to each of those pieces of metal. And then we drove down to a part of California that had good control from natural enemies of ash whitefly and used our little jar things. And we sucked on one tube to create a vacuum in the jar and use the other tube to vacuum up whiteflies and their predators. So we’d release those. That was a fun day.

Farmer Fred:

[11:56] I think the reason the ash whitefly population has been reduced in our area is because the Modesto ash trees basically died.

Debbie Flower:

[12:03] Yes, that's part of it. But also we then came and brought what was the contents of our jar, which had the beneficials in it and released it in high population ash whitefly areas. So I was part of that, too.

Farmer Fred:

[12:15] Congratulations.

Debbie Flower:

[12:16] Thank you.

Farmer Fred:

[12:17] All right. Basically, the last resorts then? Oils, soaps, any sort of chemicals?

Debbie Flower:

[12:22] Right. Always the last resort. You want to try everything else first. You want to try thinning out the plants so the beneficials can get there, washing the plants so the dust is removed. Controlling any ants that happen to be, tending to the white flies, removing the most infected plant, especially if it's in a greenhouse situation, watching for beneficials. And if you see pupil cases that are black there, you've got beneficials in them and waiting for the beneficials to show up. You have to have some patience to deal with this. But yes, as a last resort, you use the pesticides.

Farmer Fred:

[12:54] And remember, too, those good bug hotels are important for building up the beneficial insect populations that can help keep future whitefly populations at bay.

Debbie Flower:

[13:03] Very true. All right.

Farmer Fred:

[13:04] Whiteflies, we can do this. Yes. Thank you, Debbie.

Debbie Flower:

[13:08] You're welcome, Fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred:

[13:12] You have a small yard and you think you don't have the room for fruit trees? Well, maybe you better think again because Dave Wilson Nursery wants to show you how to grow great tasting fruits like peaches, apples, pluots, and nut trees. Plus, they have potted fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries, figs, grapes, hops, kiwi, olives, and pomegranates. These are all plants that you can grow in small areas. You can even grow many of them in containers on patios as well. It's called Backyard Orchard Culture, and you can get step-by-step information via the Dave Wilson YouTube videos. So where do you find those? Well, just go to DaveWilson.com, click on the Home Garden tab at the top of the page. Also in that Home Garden tab, you're going to find a link to their fruit and nut harvest chart. You can be picking delicious, healthy fruits from your own yard from May to December here in USDA Zone 9. And something else you're going to find in that Home Garden tab. You're going to find the closest nursery to you that carries Dave Wilson's quality fruit trees, and they're in nurseries from coast to coast. So start the backyard orchard of your dreams at DaveWilson.com. 

CONTROLLING SLUGS, SNAILS, EARWIGS

 Farmer Fred:

As I mentioned back at the beginning of the show, we received a question from Erin in Texas who wrote in and said, “Howdy, I always hear you and Debbie Flower talking about mulching your garden area with arborist chips. How do you deter the slugs? I've done the mulching, but now my garden is infested.”

 Well, actually, I'm going to be doing a deep dive, so to speak, in this week's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter about all the ways to control slugs in mulch. But as a preliminary introduction to the topic of slug control, let's revisit a chat Debbie Flower and I had back in Episode 10 of the Garden Basics podcast about not only slug control, but also snails and earwigs, which can cause similar looking damage to plants.

 Episode 10, by the way,  was a long time ago. Debbie was on an actual desktop telephone talking to us. Well, I guess it could have been a wall phone. But nevertheless, here's that conversation. 

Farmer Fred:

Here on the Garden Basics Podcast, we like to tackle your garden questions. You know how to send them in. And I like to bring in the heavy guns when we're answering garden questions. And I can't think of any better gun than Debbie Flower. Debbie Flower, retired horticultural college professor, has gardened throughout the United States and knows her plants and knows why, too, about the plants and the bugs and all that. So, Debbie, if you're ready, I'm ready.

Debbie Flower:

[15:57] I'm ready. All right. I've been called a gun before, but I'll do my best.

Farmer Fred:

[16:00] I was trying to be nice. It just didn't come out right. That's all.

Debbie Flower:

[16:06] A water pistol. How about that?

Farmer Fred:

[16:08] Okay. Okay, pistolero. Karen writes in and says, “So what do you recommend to control earwigs? I'm not going to do the semi-buried jar lids of vegetable oil anymore. Last year, the earwigs ruined many of my zinnia plants, so I want to get ahead of them this year.” 

Well, now, first of all, she mentions the semi-buried jar lid of vegetable oil, And in many earwig control instructions, you might see that where you take a mayonnaise jar lid or some small lid and put a couple of drops of cooking oil and some water in it and then bury it up to the lip in the soil where the earwigs might be traveling. And theoretically, they get in the oil and stay there.

Debbie Flower:

[16:54] Yes, they sometimes I also add a little soy sauce for some kind of aroma to attract them. And yes, the insects in general breathe through their skin. And so once they get oil on them, they can't breathe anymore. So it does kill them.

Farmer Fred:

[17:09] Wow. Well, I saw that movie. It was called Goldfinger. All right. There's a lot of other earwig controls. Still one of my favorites is rolling up a damp newspaper and putting it out where you see them at night and putting that newspaper out in the evening and then going back in the morning. And they're usually snug and cozy inside that rolled up newspaper. And then you can just shake them off into a bucket of soapy water.

Debbie Flower:

[17:38] Right. They work at night. They're out at night. So you won't see them during the day. And they come out and do the feeding at night. And the susceptible plants are typically the seedlings. So when Karen talked about them ruining many of her zinnia plants, I suspect that was when the zinnias were very young. She just put them in the ground. And so a lot happens in the garden at night when we're not there watching. And earwigs is one of those. Earwig feeding is one of those things. And so, yeah, you can put out the damp, rolled up newspaper at night near the seedlings where they're going to feed. And then when they're done feeding that night they will climb into the damp newspaper as a place to spend the day and it works If you can keep that newspaper moist, as does the buried lid of vegetable oil, when they're done, they, well, they're very attracted to the odor is what I hear. They will crawl right in and kill themselves. 

But the other thing that I use, and I use it sparingly, but I do use it when I have seedlings in the ground that I value, and that is a product called Sluggo Plus.

 It is Sluggo for the slugs that, it is a bait. It is a bait that is attractive to slugs and snails, and they will eat it and die.

 And slugs and snails are big in California, but I also know that I've seen them in my mother's garden in New York. I think they're traveling around the country in potted plants. So if you've never seen them before, again, they feed at night when it's moist and cool. You may want to check your garden at night. 

But the Sluggo-plus is a very earth-friendly, organic. It is organic certified. OMRI listed is what you look for to find a pesticide that's organic certified. OMRI is the Organic Material Review Institute. And if a product has OMRI, O-M-R-I on the label, then it can be used in organic production. And so this is a product that is OMRI listed and it does work on slugs. But the plus part, you can buy just slugg-o, which is iron phosphate. You can buy other brands of iron phosphate. But the plus part of this product is spinosad. It's another product, also OMRI listed. It's the natural substance that's normally made by soil bacteria. So things that are already living in your garden and have the ability to make it. But it's a concentrated form and it is very effective at controlling earwigs. So that is a product I would use in my garden to get earwigs. But one thing to know if you do use it is read a label, as with all pesticides. But this one you use one half to one teaspoon per square yard.

Farmer Fred:

[20:26] That's not much.

Debbie Flower:

[20:27] No, that's very little product over that area. It can be toxic to worms, earthworms. So please, please, please read the label and follow all label instructions.

Farmer Fred:

[20:42] Definitely. And as you mentioned, the active ingredients are iron phosphate and the spinosad. And the iron phosphate, from everything I read about it, it works better if it's slightly damp. So perhaps before applying it, lightly sprinkle the area. And that, I think, puts out an aroma or something that attracts the slugs, the snails, and probably the earwigs.

Debbie Flower:

[21:05] Okay. Yeah. I remember hearing a presentation by a representative of one of the companies that sells iron phosphate, and it's made on pasta equipment. It's made like spaghetti and chopped into little pieces. So if you can think of dry spaghetti in the box, it's pretty hard stuff. And slugs and snails have very soft bodies. Some controls of slugs and snails include just physical things that we don't find. Diatomaceous earth is one of them. To us, it feels soft, almost like talcum powder, but to a slug or snail, it cuts up their little bodies. So rough pasta, if you can think of pasta broken into little tiny pieces, would have rough edges. But if it's soft from some moisture, that would solve the problem and make it much more palatable, I would think. Not being a slug or snail, I can't really say it.

Farmer Fred:

[21:59] Now, we should point out we were talking about a very specific product and even a subset of a specific product. Sluggo Plus is different than Sluggo. Sluggo by itself, which controls snails and slugs, is iron phosphate. It's Sluggo Plus that also includes the spinosad. And I think that's actually a better way to go because a lot of people have trouble. I have trouble trying to ascertain of who did the damage to the young plant. Was it a slug? Was it a snail? Or was it an earwig?

Debbie Flower:

[22:27] Right. Yes. And I did start out this year using only the iron phosphate in my garden, but I was still having trouble with losing seedlings overnight or getting seedlings that were very damaged. And a little damage is good, actually. In a vegetable garden, a little damage to the plant actually activates the physiology inside of the plant that actually can make the plant more healthy to us and more healthy for itself. It activates defenses. So a little damage, you need to have an action threshold. And the action threshold should not be a little bit of damage. You should not act to control the pest until the pest is taking over the garden and eliminating what you want to grow. So that's one topic. But yeah, so I was using the, I know I have slugs and snails in my garden. We didn't come out with them on my hands. So I did put out the iron phosphate alone, but I was still seeing damage and losing seedlings to something else. And earwigs are the next suspect in my yard.

Debbie Flower:

[23:30] And when I used a little bit of the spinosad, it worked very well.

Farmer Fred:

[23:34] Going back to the rolled up damp newspaper, that would clue you in that it definitely would be earwigs if you found earwigs in that rolled up newspaper the following morning. I don't think slugs and snails would tend to spend the night there. I think they would tend to go back to wherever they came from.

Debbie Flower:

[23:51] They also look for moist, dark places to hide, but unfortunately, great moist, dark places include the interface between a raised vegetable garden, that spot between the soil and the wall of the vegetable garden. It stays nice and dark and stays moist, and so they spend their days right next to the plants they're going to eat that night. They really do need a lot of moisture. They have a different exoskeleton, which is the outside of the insect. They have slugs and snails are much softer and moister on the outside than an earwig is. And so the slugs and snails need a greater amount of moisture to survive the night, to survive the day. I'm sorry, the warm, hot, dry day.

Farmer Fred:

[24:36] Now, if you  are used to using other snail control products, you may be disappointed when you use iron phosphate, the sluggo or sluggo plus, because you will not see the dead snails. They take it back to their nest where they share it with their buddies. And it's not uncommon to find a snail nest full of dead snails. You do not get the thrill of the kill like you would find with something that has the active ingredient metaldehyde. But trust me, you want to use iron phosphate. You don't want to use metaldehyde because of its toxicity to children and pets.

Debbie Flower:

[25:14] Yes. Yes. You have to get over the fact that you're not going to see all of that mucusy mess that killing slugs and snails with the other type, the metaldehyde bait produces, but it is a very effective control and it is much more environmentally friendly and it is not harmful to our pets or wildlife. I should also say there are other pesticides that contain spinosad, and it comes in different forms, but the different forms work in some cases for other insects and not on earwigs. So a pesticide label always, by law, has to say what pest it is used on and in what garden situation. And so when in doubt, it also has to list the active ingredients. So when in doubt, actually not when in doubt, always read the pesticide label to be sure that it is labeled for the pest you want to control in the situation. So this would be landscape gardening, vegetable gardening. You want something that if you're using it in a vegetable garden, you want to be sure it's not going to poison the food that you eat. And also that it will show spinosad as one of the active ingredients.

Farmer Fred:

[26:31] That is the first step in what we've been calling integrated pest management in controlling pests, starting with the least toxic alternatives. Step number one is always identify the pest.

Debbie Flower:

[26:43] Yes.

Farmer Fred:

[26:44] And  positively identify the pest.

Debbie Flower:

[26:46] And that can be difficult. You may need to take it somewhere. If your state has a Master Gardener program, take it to one of their events or probably communicate with them by email. Pictures are always good. Ag commissioners in the state of California are a possibility to take it into the nursery and show the people who work there and potentially they can help you.

Farmer Fred:

[27:10] One good habit to get into if you like taking pictures of unidentified critters in your garden and then showing it to people to get it identified is to have a reference point in the picture. It could be as simple as a coin that you put next to the pest or the bug. And so we can get an idea of what the size is. Or if you're really technical, you could put a ruler under it.

Debbie Flower:

[27:32] That was a requirement in both plant ID class and in pest management class when the students made their collections of plants and pests. They could use pictures that there had to be scale in there, a penny or a ruler or something of known size.

Farmer Fred:

[27:49] Did you make them use metric rulers?

Debbie Flower:

[27:53] No, I let them choose the scale. And if it was something obscure, someone used a euro, they had to put a sample of it in their collection. Wow. A real one. Yeah.

Farmer Fred:

[28:04] Okay. Oh, I'm getting a text in here from the Earwig Appreciation Society, and they're reminding us that earwigs do have a beneficial purpose in the garden. They like to munch on aphids. Oh, okay.

Debbie Flower:

[28:20] I was going to say they're very good at breaking down organic matter and releasing the nutrients back to the soil. So there are at least two wonderful reasons that we have earwigs in the garden. So it isn't, we're not looking to eradicate them from your yard, period. Eradication means they're gone and you'll never see them again. We're just looking to control them at the location where they are feeding on your baby, it would be baby plants, to the point of losing those baby plants. And only once the plants go past the baby stage, generally earwigs are not an issue and you want to stop control.

Farmer Fred:

[28:58] And I'm reading here on the University of California website, the IPM page on earwig control. And Karen said that her zinnias were really taking a hit from them. And sure enough, earwigs may also seriously damage flowers, including zinnias, marigolds and dahlias.

Debbie Flower:

[29:14] So it may have been the flowers, not just the seedlings. Yeah, it could have been. Yeah, I have seen earwigs sleeping, it appears anyway, inside flowers.

Farmer Fred:

[29:24] One thing you really need to do, too, if you're trying to figure out, well, is it an earwig or a slug or a snail? Take a flashlight, go out late at night and look around and you just might see them. Or another way to identify what might be eating your garden is to sprinkle some flour, take some kitchen flour and spread it beneath the plant and look for trails or footprints the following morning.

Debbie Flower:

[29:51] Right. We might also add that earwigs, of course, we have the internet and people can look up what an earwig is. They're also called pincher bugs because they have pinchers on their rear end. They do not harm humans. I assume they use those pinchers for other defense. Big ID characteristic.

Farmer Fred:

[30:12] Well, we found out a lot today about controlling earwigs and snails and slugs and keep them out of your garden. It takes a lot of vigilance and a lot of steady work. Debbie Flower, thanks for a few minutes of your time. And let's go kill some slugs and snails and earwigs.

Debbie Flower:

[30:27] All righty. All righty. Sounds like fun.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred:

[30:32] You may have noticed when we should have been  answering Erin's questions about slugs and mulch, Debbie Flower and myself talked mainly about chemical controls. But there are a lot of other controls available for eradicating slugs in mulch, and they don't involve chemical pesticides. That subject is tackled in this week's Beyond the Garden Basic newsletter.

It’s entitled, appropriately enough, Controlling Slugs and Mulch. And we offer some warnings about using chemical controls for slugs, And Debbie even mentioned some of them in the segment you just heard, including possible damage to the earthworm population, as well as formulations that include active ingredients that could be harmful to your children and pets. But actually, slug control in mulch can be achieved with some fairly easy cultural controls, too. It's all in the May 23rd, 2025 edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, available in its entirety for both free and paid subscribers. Paid subscribers, though, do have some added perks. We have a new Monday publication that's just for paid subscribers. And another benefit, paid subscribers also have complete access to the previous posts of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, of which there are now over 200 editions. By the way, your paid subscription to the newsletter supports not only the ongoing efforts to produce the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, but it also helps keep the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast freely available each week, wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more information about the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter in several places. We'll have a link in today's show notes. You can go to our homepage, GardenBasics.net. You can go to FarmerFred.com or find it at Substack. And thank you for your support and encouragement to keep the good gardening conversation going.

Farmer Fred:

[32:25] Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday, and it's brought to you by Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript of the podcast, visit our website, gardenbasics.net. And thank you so much for listening and your support.