I have a population of earwigs eating its way through my garden and I didn’t even know it. Each morning I would walk out to my garden—about 50 yards from my door—and see that the leaves of my Swiss chard, beets and pepper plants had new dime-sized holes in them. Each subsequent day the holes would get bigger until on one poor plant, the leaf was a “leaf” in name only—it was pretty much just a midrib.

Then I noticed the Swiss chard in a mixed veggie-flower container on my porch were getting the same holes. And the flowering plants weren’t immune to the nibbling, either—except in that case the flower petals were having chunks taken out of them. Whatever was eating its way through my garden was getting closer and getting bolder.

Whatever it was, it was doing its misdeeds under cover of darkness. I was convinced it had to be slugs or snails, notorious nighttime marauders. But I couldn’t find any telltale smears of slime left by them. I even snuck out to the garden in the middle of the night to shine a flashlight around the garden. Not a snail or slug in sight. And nothing else, either.

I posted a photo of the damage online and a friend suggested it could be earwigs. Aha! I had recently noticed earwigs near my front door and around my porch and hadn’t thought anything of them. These crazy-moving characters could indeed be the cause.

Earwigs Can Be Beneficial

I’m in a conundrum about removing earwigs from the garden. It turns out they feed on aphids, maggots, grubs and army worms. They also eat dead and decaying plant matter. Those are all good things for them to eat. Yes, they’ve been eating some of my veggie leaves and some ornamental flowers. And they did destroy a few chard leaves altogether. However, the good they do for the garden—keeping aphid and grub populations in check—is a mark in their favor.

I ended up with a bit of a compromise. I used a product from Bonide—Captain Jack’s Deadbug Brew—that battles a slew of bugs and beetles using a toxic-to-them naturally occurring bacteria. I typically use this product to control leaf miners and flea beetles, but haven’t had an issue with those in this new garden. I have used the Deadbug Brew a few times in the past two weeks, and that seems to have knocked back the earwig population a bit—not completely but a bit. While the earwig numbers have been low, the chard, beets and peppers have had a chance to bounce back. They are now growing like gangbusters.

The earwigs are still out there and able to eat any aphids, grubs or decaying plant material they can find. Just stay away from those baby chard leaves, buddies.