Picture it. It was the summer of 2015, I was relaxing in my patio chair watching my kids play in the pool and admiring the the beautiful day. Then, out of nowhere a huge pincer bug starts climbing up my leg. Then, out of nowhere another huge pincer bug starts climbing across my arm! They were hiding in the chair cushions - trying to keep cool during the hot summer days. These little bugs were a plague on my garden. They ate the flower buds from my peony before it even opened. They mowed my vegetable garden down in one night. They were in my front yard, my back yard, my patio, my house.....they were EVERYWHERE!
I was frantic. Hectic. Desperate. At my WITS END! I searched all over the internet for a solution to rid my farm of this nasty pest. Many of the 'solutions' I found involved me staying up at night (when the pests are most active) and catching them. Um, no thank you - that doesn't sound efficient at all. By chance I had a conversation with a fellow master gardener who offered me the holy grail equivalent of pincer bug traps. This method works so well that I just have to share it with the world. I'll admit I was skeptical at first, but I was so desperate I had to give it a try:
You will need, soy sauce, vegetable oil and a small plastic container (single-serving yogurt cups work great). Any brand of soy sauce and vegetable oil works, just buy whatever is on sale - don't use your good stuff. In fact, if you frequent the dollar store I recommend picking up your ingredients there. In your container mix equal parts 1:1 of soy sauce & vegetable oil, leaving room at the top. In my yogurt cups I fill 1/3 soy sauce, 1/3 veggie oil, and 1/3 open air. Place the cups in your garden or wherever you suspect pincer bug activity. You can place your traps any time of day, but pincher bugs are most active at night, so they won't investigate until the sun sets. Here I placed traps right in my veggie bed (burying them in the soil makes it easier for the bugs to climb inside):
The soy sauce is what attracts the bugs, the vegetable oil is what drowns them. Below you can see the bugs on top of the soy sauce, but UNDER the oil...
I put three traps in this raised bed last night and all three traps had over a dozen bugs each when I checked this morning. If you suspect earwig damage in your garden, or if you have them hiding in your patio chair cushions, please give this non-toxic pesticide a try!
Tips:
This doesn't work well in an area that gets overhead watering, as the traps will fill with water and flood out. You can put a lid on your container and cut holes in the sides near the top so the bugs can still get in.
I empty my traps every few weeks when it gets really full of carcasses and debris. Placing a fresh trap will help determine if you still have pincher bug activity in that particular location.
Slugs are attracted to this mixture too, so you may find a few of those pests as well; however, slugs prefer beer to soy sauce.
