Slug and Earwig barrier?

[wifezilla]

What do you think of this idea....

Fiberglass!!!

I have a huge roll of it sitting around.

Will it stop a slug and/or an earwig?

The DE isn't doing enough to keep my plants alive.

 

[patandchickens]

Fiberglass what? I'm not really getting why it would stop either of them, sorry?

A thorough copper barrier stops slugs (tho does nothing about slugs already within the enclosed area), as does nightly handpicking and beer traps; to some extent you can trap earwigs and dispose of daily, but major earwig infestations (like, my place in a dry year) can be pretty hard to deal with.


Pat

 

[lesa]

Pat is 100% correct- as usual! I was lucky enough to find a bunch of copper tubing of different diameters. I lined my whole garden with it, around the edges. I have had little to no slug or snail problem. Last year, I picked and picked and they still devoured my pumpkins. I suspect this would be an expensive way to solve the problem- but every little bit of scrap tubing would help..I have read of people surrounding individual plants with copper, as well. Good luck!

 

[wifezilla]

Fiberglass insulation around the base of the plant is what I am envisioning. Nightly picking never made a dent in the population. Beer traps either. I even poisoned the darn things a few years back...I still had a healthy population.

The ducks have really helped in the back yard, but they don't go in the front yard or the side yard where most of the damage is occurring. The ducks have also done their share of plant damage, so I am still working on the right balance of duck access to planted areas.

I have already had to put my zucchini and other plants in cages to keep the squirrels off, but the bugs still got most of them.

As for copper, I hear that helps and a do have a few scraps, but not enough to protect the beans. Out of a dozen plants, I have gotten 2 beans. TWO! All the bean plants look horrible. Most are dead.

 

[patandchickens]

Fiberglass batts left outside sort of glump together into a ugly wet soggy pink woolly paper-mache-style mess, IME.

Aside from it'd be pretty bad news for any ducks, small mammals etc who tried to eat the fiberglass or take some home to make a nest out of, I can pretty much guarantee it would do zero vs earwigs (insect cuticle is quite tough), and I'm real skeptical whether it'd do anything vs slugs either.

If you want a slug barrier, copper is the way to go. If you put in a slightly raised barrier around the garden you can attach copper tape (sold in gardening catalogs) or copper wire mesh (ditto) or scrap copper plumbing all around the outside, so that the only way in is for slugs to climb over the barrier and they can't do that b/c of the copper. Then you still have to get rid of the slugs *inside* the barrier but with handpicking at night, and beer traps, that is not as big a task.

Earwigs can be 'collected' daily by putting out places for them to hide in and then dropping the hidey-place devices into a bucket of soapy water to kill the lodgers. But earwigs can be a serious problem. Have you considered penning your ducks into the problem parts of the garden, like in a temporary tractor-type pen?

Can I ask, how long have you been veggie gardening in this particular spot. Because a lot of times, having really good soil (which takes years to achieve) will let the plants outgrow the bugs, whereas if they're on less loose, less water retentive, less multiply-nutrient-rich soil, the bugs will do a lot more serious damage. So I am wondering whether this is something that might get better for you as the years go by?

Good luck and commiseration (it's been too wet here for the earwigs and grasshoppers to have really gone berserk, but we do have slugs aplenty, and my beans are looking pretty ragged althoguh I think they will eventually get the upper hand),

Pat

 

[wifezilla]

The area is a raised bed. I have planted there before, but the raised part is new. The bugs are coming from THE NEIGHBORS. She NEVER takes care of her yard. Nothing I can do about that.

Penning the ducks in that area is a possibility, but I need to buy more fencing first.

If a squirrel chokes on a piece of fiberglass so much the better.

 

[farmerkim]

I don't have any slugs around my house, so I have never tried this. But I have heard crushed egg shells work. Have you tried that?

 

[wifezilla]

Yup. I think it slowed them down a little. That and the DE, but they still ate almost all my bean plants.

I am doing an experiment right now. I planted a fall crop of beets. Half are surrounded by pieces of white insulation. The other half is open to attack. In a couple of weeks we can compare the two mini plots.