Friends and Foes

[kenkew]

Earwigs; Some say friend, some say foe. It seems to be one of those in-between bugs. Personally I think they do more good than harm. Easy to collect as they love to climb. A tin or pot stuffed with straw upside down on a stake in the middle of flowers will attract them. Scatter the contents on the garden and the earwigs will go a-hunting. Look for them in seed cases of lupins and sweetpeas.

[Beer_Belly]

hmmm tricky - here's some more info to let people make up their minds

http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/earwig.htm

http://www.communigate.co.uk/london/fuchsia/page7.phtml

-B_B-

[Hugh_Jones]

As long as they can be deterred from ravaging your prize dahlia or chrysanthemum blooms, there is no very good reason for killing earwigs, since they dispose of a lot of garden pests.

[eileen]

Just wish they'd stop burrowing into my clematis flower buds though!!  

[budgiebreeder]

They seem to like to come indoors with the cut flowers  no matter how hard i've tried to leave them outside.

[aquilegia]

(slightly off topic, but carrying on from BB's post) I once picked up a bit of green fluff off the sofa, only to fling it across the living room in shock   when it wiggled at me to reveal itself as a caterpillar that had hitched a lift in on some cut flowers.

[kenkew]

Now isn't it strange? Aqui threw it away, not because (I suppose) she doesn't like caterpillers, but because it was in the wrong place. In the garden I doubt we would think twice about picking up a catty, but because it was on the sofa, it was the enemy. Mind you, if I found a sofa on my plot.....!

[Beer_Belly]

Another favourite hiding place for wiggies is elderberry clusters.

I managed to get hundreds of them in the boot of my mates car when collecting the fruit for my wine.

-B_B-

[eileen]

No more elderberry picking for me then!!   Ian can have the job, thanks very much.  

[kenkew]

Wasps?...



...or bees?

[kenkew]

...or mice even?

[Ceri]

my anthropology student daughter tells me it is just 'matter out of place' - don't you just love students when they've learnt something new!  We couldn't move without doing something illegal when she was doing her A level law!  Apparently we are repulsed by matter out of place, not because of what it is but what it is in the context of where it is.  i.e. a hair on a hairbrush does not revolt most of us, where a hair in our dinner would. To me a mouse would be matter out of place wherever it was, but my daughter would probably want to feed it, even if it lived behind our skirting boards!  Personally student daughters home for a month is turning rapidly into matter our of place!

[eileen]

Oh Ceri, I know just how you feel.

They're fine when they're at the end of a 'phone nowadays but very trying when they come home for a while!

Eileen.

[kenkew]

Too true, couldn't agree more, and if I get pests like those again I'm investing in traps and poison and a dozen cats!

[John_Verney]

 :oWhien I was 17 I worked n a  farm in Iona.  I had done my washing and put it on a fence to dry  .  On taking it in I found 48 earwig s had taken up residence!!! .  

[eileen]

Kenkew, for one horrible minute there I thought you meant daughters not mice   That's what comes of having two conversations at once  

Eileen.

[kenkew]

I have 3 grown-up daughters and mice on the plot. Are you sure which topic I'm replying to?

[kenkew]

A single wasp went up the tiny gaps, came out and sealed up the entrances. This was late last year. What's going to come out!!

[kenkew]

I found these worms quite happily swimming around in the puddles on a plastic sheet on part of my plot. ??

[budgiebreeder]

looks like spaghetti Ken.Have you tried frying them.After all "owt fer nowt"