What do slater bugs eat

Just like worms, slaters are great for your garden as they eat organic matter and return nutrients to the soil. Having a few slaters around will keep your plants happy and healthy.

Slaters need moisture and mostly come out at night when the risk of drying out is low. Slaters navigate with specialised equipment.

The new baby slaters stay in the pouch for a short time after they hatch. Young slaters look like adults except they have one less body segment and pair of legs. Slaters grow by moulting. A new skin grows underneath their tough, outer skeleton, which splits into two pieces. One half comes off over a few days, with the other half falling off a few days later. The skin underneath then gradually hardens. During moulting a slater is very vulnerable and needs to find a safe place to shelter as it grows.

Slaters will occasionally feed on young plants. Slaters shelter under objects in contact with the ground. Reduce the amount of harbourages by removing empty pots and stacks of timber, bricks and rocks.

Make traps from hollowed out orange halves or fill seedling punnets or empty toilet rolls with potato peelings. Each morning dispose of the slaters that congregate in the traps overnight. Treat areas supporting high slater populations with snail baits containing methiocarb or use the iron EDTA baits which are safer around pets. Granular products containing bifenthrin are also registered to control slaters. Warning: Be careful when applying baits to avoid the accidental poisoning of children and pets.

Read the label and follow the directions. You are here Home » Slaters. Maybe also reducing the amount of organic matter directly around your vegies — this is difficult if you are trying to garden organically, but may help for a season until numbers of pests can be reduced. All the best with your gardening efforts. Cheers, Amanda PS I managed to delete the duplicate comments. Hi, the earwigs at my place in Northern Vic are out of control. They are eating all of my seedlings..

I have done a number of things to try to manage earwigs, homemade spray, vaseline, linseed oil traps, etc. I have also planted some marigolds. Hi Catherine, Thanks for your inquiry. They can be such a pest and we have had such a wet spring — they love to hide in cool damp spots! I have a few suggestions that may help so here goes… 1.

Some people have success planting very aromatic herbs such as lavender, catnip, mint and lemon balm around their vegie patch. I have heard that Diatomaceous Earth helps, as it dries out the bugs as they come into contact with it. Apply as a small circle around the plants — take care not to breathe in.

Remove any mulch or debris close to the plants so they have nowhere to hide during the day. Check for snails too — sometimes the earwigs are present as they like eating slugs and snails and often get blamed for eating the plants instead. Try trapping them by putting crumpled newspaper into flower pots and leaving the pots on their side in garden beds. In the morning, drop the crumpled newspaper into a half bucket of soapy water to drown the insects, then refill the traps with fresh paper.

Earwigs often go for really fresh seedlings, so maybe potting them up until they are older and less tasty, or covering them with an upturned plastic bottle embedded into the soil around the plant. If you have chickens, you could let them graze parts of the veggie patch to get rid of most of the pests before you start again.

Cheers and happy and pest free gardening, Amanda. For earwigs I have found egg cartoons with orange peel in them works well. The earwigs congregate in there overnight and in the morning I feed them to the chooks. This has made the difference between a disastrous year last year and virtually no seedling losses at all this year.

Just want to say thanks so much for your suggestion! Thanks for this info. I have just been out with a torch and found my seedlings infested with earwigs. I thought they may be the culprits in the absence of signs of snails or caterpillars.

Hi Gail, Thanks for your feedback and well done on finding the culprits. Thanks for your comment about the lettuces and peas — hopefully it helps other readers too. In the Garden Home In the Garden. An age old superstition gives the earwig its name — these insects were said to crawl into the ears of sleeping people! In reality they rarely bite, except when surprised. Earwigs have large, pincer-like protrusions at the rear of their body, which act as forceps to catch prey and fight. They enjoy an omnivorous diet of some vegetation, but mostly meat in the form of other small creatures.

Damage Earwigs become a problem when they attack growing plants, especially tender young seedlings. Cultural Control Sanitation and Other Controls The best way to control any pests is to employ good garden hygiene to reduce sheltering and breeding sites. Earwig trap of oil and water Another key method of earwig control is trapping and there are several suggestions on how to do this.

Take advantage of their attraction to vegetable or fish oil and use an oil trap. Take a low sided can with a centimeter or two of oil in the bottom. Sink it into the ground near your target plants so the top of the can is level with the soil.

If you would like to, add a tablespoon each of molasses and soy sauce and mix well together. Fill an old container with water and pour in a small amount of raw linseed oil.