7 Best Earwig Bait For Small Garden Pests Old Gardeners Swear By
Discover 7 time-tested earwig baits seasoned gardeners swear by. From simple oil traps to soy sauce lures, learn how to protect your plants effectively.
You walk out to your garden one morning and see it. Tiny, irregular holes chewed into the leaves of your young bean plants. The petals on your prize-winning zinnias look like they’ve been shredded with scissors. This is classic earwig damage, and for a small-scale grower, it can be a real source of frustration. Understanding how to bait and trap these nocturnal pests is a fundamental skill for protecting your hard work. This isn’t about eradicating every bug, but about managing their numbers so your plants can thrive.
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Understanding Earwig Habits in Your Garden
Before you can effectively trap anything, you have to understand its behavior. Earwigs are not pure villains; they eat aphids, mites, and other insect eggs. The problem is they also have a taste for tender seedlings, soft fruits like strawberries, and flowers like dahlias and marigolds.
They are creatures of the night. During the day, they hide in dark, damp, tight spaces—under mulch, inside rolled-up leaves, beneath rocks, or in the crevices of your raised beds. This behavior is their weakness and your greatest advantage when it comes to trapping them.
Knowing this tells you exactly where to focus your efforts. Placing traps out in the open on bare soil is a waste of time. You need to put your baits and traps right where they live and travel: along the edges of beds, near heavily mulched areas, and close to the specific plants showing damage.
DIY Soy Sauce & Oil Trap: A Pantry Solution
Sometimes the best solution is the simplest one you can make from your own kitchen. The soy sauce and oil trap is a perfect example. It costs pennies and takes minutes to set up, making it ideal for targeted problem spots.
To make one, take a small, shallow container like a tuna can or a plastic yogurt cup. Pour in about half an inch of vegetable oil and add a splash of soy sauce. The salty, fermented smell of the soy sauce is an irresistible attractant to earwigs.
Bury the container in the soil so the rim is level with the ground. Earwigs, drawn by the scent, will crawl in and get trapped in the oil. This is a fantastic diagnostic tool to confirm you have an earwig problem and a great way to reduce their numbers around a specific set of prized seedlings.
Sluggo Plus: The Iron Phosphate Powerhouse
When you need something more potent and widespread than a few DIY traps, a commercial bait like Sluggo Plus is a reliable choice. This isn’t your granddad’s harsh chemical pesticide. It’s a granular bait that many organic gardeners feel comfortable using.
The "Sluggo" part is iron phosphate, which is effective against slugs and snails. The "Plus" is Spinosad, a substance derived from a naturally occurring soil bacterium, which is highly effective against earwigs, cutworms, and other pests. When earwigs eat the bait, they stop feeding and die within a few days.
The biggest advantage here is ease of use. You simply sprinkle the pellets around the base of the plants you want to protect. The main tradeoff is cost. It’s more expensive than a homemade solution, but for a busy hobby farmer, the time saved and the effectiveness can be well worth the investment. It’s a powerful tool for when an infestation gets ahead of you.
The Rolled Newspaper Trap: Simple & Effective
This method isn’t a bait but a physical trap that brilliantly exploits the earwig’s love for tight, dark spaces. It’s completely free, non-toxic, and incredibly effective if you’re consistent. It’s a perfect example of working with an insect’s nature instead of against it.
Simply take a section of newspaper, roll it up, and get it damp. You can also use a small piece of corrugated cardboard or a short length of old garden hose. In the evening, place these traps on the ground in areas where you’ve seen damage.
The next morning, the earwigs will have crawled inside to hide from the daylight. Your job is to collect the traps before the day heats up. Shake the earwigs out into a bucket of soapy water to dispose of them. The only downside is that this method requires daily attention; if you forget for a day or two, you’re just providing them with a nice home.
Monterey Garden Bait with Spinosad Control
Similar to Sluggo Plus, Monterey Garden Bait is another excellent commercial option that relies on Spinosad. While they seem alike, it’s good to know the different products available, as one might be more accessible or affordable in your area. This is about having options in your toolkit.
This bait is specifically formulated to attract and kill earwigs, cutworms, and other common soil-dwelling pests. The Spinosad ingredient is a key reason for its effectiveness, disrupting the nervous system of the insects that ingest it. It provides a targeted approach when you know exactly what pest you’re dealing with.
Consider this your second line of defense. If DIY traps aren’t cutting it and you have a significant population threatening your crops, a Spinosad-based bait is a logical next step. It’s about escalating your response appropriately, not reaching for the strongest solution first.
The Bacon Grease Lure: An Old-Timer’s Secret
Here’s one you won’t find on the shelf at a garden center. The bacon grease lure is an old-school trick that uses a powerful, savory scent to draw earwigs into a trap. It’s a testament to the resourcefulness of gardeners from past generations.
The setup is similar to the soy sauce trap. Take a small container and smear a bit of bacon grease on the bottom. You can add a little water or oil to create a drowning pool. The intense, fatty aroma is a magnet for earwigs.
The major consideration here is your local wildlife. A bacon grease trap can also attract raccoons, skunks, or even the neighbor’s dog. If you have a fenced-in garden or don’t have issues with larger critters, it’s a fantastic, nearly free option. If not, you might be inviting a bigger problem than the one you’re trying to solve.
Sunken Beer Trap: A Tried-and-True Method
The beer trap is famous for catching slugs, but many gardeners find it full of earwigs, too. The yeast in the beer is a powerful attractant for a variety of garden pests. It’s a classic method for a reason—it works.
Sink a shallow dish or can into the soil, leaving the lip about a half-inch above the ground to prevent beneficial ground beetles from falling in. Fill it with an inch or two of the cheapest beer you can find. There’s no need to waste good craft beer on pests.
Like other liquid traps, this requires maintenance. You’ll need to clean out the dead bugs and refill it every few days, and especially after a rain. It’s another excellent, low-cost option for localized control, perfect for placing around a prized dahlia or a row of lettuce.
Safer Brand Diatomaceous Earth for Barriers
This last one isn’t a bait, but it’s such an essential part of an earwig control strategy that it has to be on the list. Diatomaceous Earth (DE) is not a lure; it’s a barrier. It acts as a mechanical killer, not a chemical one.
DE is the fossilized remains of tiny aquatic organisms. Under a microscope, the particles look like shards of glass. To a soft-bodied insect like an earwig, crawling across a line of DE is like crawling over razor wire. It scratches their exoskeleton, and they dehydrate and die.
The key is to use it correctly. You create a protective ring on dry soil around the base of vulnerable plants. Its biggest weakness is water. Once DE gets wet, it’s completely ineffective. This means you must reapply it after every watering or rainfall, making it a high-maintenance but incredibly safe and non-toxic method for protecting young plants.
Ultimately, controlling earwigs in a small garden isn’t about finding one magic bullet. It’s about creating a system. The best approach combines a few of these methods—perhaps using DE for seedlings, soy sauce traps in problem areas, and a commercial bait for a widespread outbreak. Observe your garden, understand the pest, and choose the tools that fit your time, budget, and philosophy.
