one of the challenges that gardeners
face especially in the spring and the
fall as we're putting out new
transplants and planting seedlings our
pill bugs and sow bugs now these are
actually not insects because they have
seven pairs of legs so 14 legs unlike an
insect with six they're actually a
member of the crustacean family like
lobsters and crayfish they like damp
areas dark areas and they typically feed
on decaying organic material so they're
not a bad thing to have in our gardens
and our landscapes because they help
with the breakdown of organic material
but they do like an occasional feeding
of young succulent plants and seedlings
so we'd have to take some care when
we're putting out new plants sometimes
when I'm putting out things like lettuce
that I know is going to be attractive to
pill bugs I start out a little bit in
advance of planting my lettuce by
reducing the number of pill bugs and
I'll do that with beer traps just a
simple coffee can a cat food can or pie
pan something like that with just a
little bit of beer in it sunk to the
level of the soil will attract them and
then they fall in drown and die and you
can take care of them and get them out
of the garden avoid having boards and
logs and and other trash and debris in
your yard because they'll tend to
collect under those areas but you can
actually make traps like that you can
put clay saucers in the ground with a
little bit of potato or Apple attract
them and put that under a board and then
that will attract a lot of them and you
can kill them and get the numbers down
in your garden but again once your
plants get established they're not going
to be as tasty to the pill bugs so it's
really just an early planting planting
pest that you'll have to deal with now
there are some things that you can use
around the house that that might be of
help for you sometimes coffee grounds
will help to repel them around seedlings
one of the secrets to is not to mulch
plants too early because having a thick
layer of mulch around the plants will
give them a hiding place and so
it's best to let your plants get up and
get established a little better and then
pull the mulch up around them as the
stems start to toughen off you'll also
benefit from watering more in the
morning and not having the foliage
really wet in the evening because that
makes conditions really nice for snails
slugs and pill bugs and can add to the
number of problems that you have around
your plants another thing that you can
do is sprinkle diatomaceous earth around
the plants but I don't find that that
has a long-lasting effect even red
pepper hot red pepper like cayenne
pepper sprinkled around seedlings can
also help you with deterring the pill
bugs there are some commercial products
available that are very helpful and very
effective and one thing you can do is
spray with orange oil just a diluted
orange oil sprayed on the surface of the
soil and also to spray under those traps
that you might put out on the garden
will help reduce the numbers very
quickly the the other product that you
can use is the bio organic spray some of
these sprays that use essential oils
work very effectively on the pill bugs
and sow bugs and then another product
that is really wonderful is Sluggo Plus
now you may have heard of Sluggo being
used for snails and slugs this this has
the iron phosphate of Sluggo but it also
has the plus which is spinosa dand that
works very effectively on millipedes and
pill bugs sell bugs all kinds of things
and the difference between a pill bug
and a sow bug is the sell bugs tend to
be a little bit flatter and they don't
roll up into a ball like the pill bugs
so the slow go plus breaks down into a
fertilizer it is a bit expensive but you
do get the benefit of having that
insecticide control plus a little bit of
fertilizer added to it and you just
sprinkle that lightly into the soil and
it will give you a long-lasting effect
and get those numbers down so wetter
years we're going to have more problems
with pill bugs so be prepared for
dealing with them when we're going to
have wet soil