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Show 4 - LIVELY TIMES - JULY 15, 1998 GARDEN GRAB BAG “was... This all started as so many ideas do...with a question. I love it when people ask me something I don’t know because then it gives me the opportunity to do some searching for the answers and, hopefully, learn something too. My favorite poster, which I hung at my job in a very conspicuous place, stated that “Half of being smart is knowing what you’ re dumb at” andI wanted it to remind myself and the other employees that none of us knows it all and we should all be continually learning. I constantly hope that the articles here help at least to some degree and that we will all learn a little something new. So what do you think about bugs? Roley-poley bugs in particular? Let’s start with them since that’s what the question was about and expand on the subject in articles in the future. Ever since I was a kid I‘ ve liked the little fellers since they always seemed to fall into the category of helpless and harmless (contrary to most things which either eat my stuff or eat me). But the answer to the question about them actually showed me that they may be undesirable under the right situations. And, apparently, some of us have the right situations... First things first, of course, and that means an They seem to be everywhere and we get so used to them that we sort of stop noticing them or really realizing how many of them there are until the numbers begin to get out of hand. Remember when I said they usually eat decaying vegetable matter? Well, it seems they’ re not above sampling tender young plants either if the opportunity presents itself.. Usually this isn’t a problem but when there gets to be a real population explosion of pill bugs this can actually result in some noticeable damage to your young garden plants. So what should you do about control? This is probably an individual question because only you will know when you think there are far too many of them around or when you start seeing damage to your seedlings. After all, we don’t want to be just randomly killing them just because they’ re there and they DO have a place in the scheme of things. There are several chemical controls and yard sprays which will kill them or at least control their numbers and these include Pest—A—Way Barrier or Sevin bait but more environmentally-friendly and less drastic measures would be preferred. I found reference to using soapy water which I can imagine really messes up their gill-breathing apparatus and, of course, there’s the old standard used with snails where you official designation in the bug world. I mean, you can’t call provide them with a place to hide, like a board laid down in them potato bugs ( which I used to do and which is very the garden, and then go out, flip over the board, and just pick confusing with REAL potato beetles and bugs) and have someone else call them sow bugs or pill bugs and realize that you’ re all talking about the same critter. “Roley—poley” individual roley-poleys as you work in the garden will certainly not wipe out the entire population but should cut bugs seems a little more universal, especially when you say “You know, those little gray guys you rolled up in balls in your hand when you were a kid.” Genealogically speaking , they’ re members of the order Isopoda, class Malacostram, family armadillididae and if you think about it, they really do remind you of tiny armadillos. But they’ re related in name only since they’ re actually crustaceans and are the only ones which have adapted themselves to land. They even still have gills with which they breathe instead of trachea like most other bugs! Sowbugs and pill bugs are actually two very slightly different species with the Sowbugs having a somewhat wider body and it really can’ t roll itself up into a ball like its cousin. But then who wants to pick up every one you see to test which type it is? They have some them up and dispose of them on a regular basis. Picking out down on the total population and decrease their numbers until you feel that they’re no longer a problem. I hope this helps with this particular problem and figure these guys are a lot easier to deal with than some of the garden pests we get which require much more aggressive treatments. This is probably a good subject to spend some time on so I’ll try to do some more research and cover a few more similar topics in the future. If you have any “tried and true” methods you’ ve found which work on particular pests please feel free to call me and add your expertise to this subject. Thanks to Chris for the subject matter for this article and we’ll see you next month! famous relatives, all of which obviously get more press than the humble pill bug. The good guys include lobsters and City-County Garbage Collection & Disposal shrimp (yum-yum) but the bad guys include slugs and snails and you’ll notice the habitat of the roley~poleys is often similar to where you’d expect to find snails. Both the Sowbugs and the pill bugs fwd on decaying matter and, like snails, they generally stay in moist dark areas, under vegetation and other objects and out of the drying rays of the sun. This, as you can imagine, has a lot to do with those gills we already talked about. They may even bury themselves in the soil down to several inches and they are mostly active at night. 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