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Earwigs

What Are Earwigs?

Earwigs are small, reddish-brown insects with pincers on their tails. They are mostly active at night and hide in cool, damp places during the day. While they can damage seedlings, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, they also help control pests by feeding on aphids, insect eggs, and decaying plant material.

How to Find & Prevent Earwigs

Earwigs are commonly found under mulch, leaf litter, rocks, boards, and other moist, sheltered areas. To prevent them, reduce excess moisture, improve drainage, remove yard debris, keep mulch away from foundations, and seal cracks around buildings.

How to Defend Against Earwigs in the Garden

Keep garden beds clean and free of excess mulch, weeds, and debris where earwigs can hide. Use simple traps such as rolled-up damp newspaper or shallow containers filled with soy sauce and vegetable oil to monitor and reduce populations. Most gardens can tolerate small numbers of earwigs, so treatment is only necessary when they begin causing noticeable plant damage.

Earwig control products

Eight® Insect Control is a contact insecticide that can help reduce earwig populations when applied to areas where they hide and travel. It can be used around foundations, mulch beds, ornamental plantings, and other damp, sheltered locations where earwigs are active. Applications are most effective in the evening when earwigs begin emerging to feed.

Sluggo® Plus is a bait that targets earwigs in addition to slugs and snails. The bait is scattered around garden beds, ornamentals, vegetables, and other susceptible plants. Earwigs feed on the bait and are controlled before they can cause further damage. Because it works as a bait, Sluggo® Plus is especially useful for reaching earwigs hiding in mulch, leaf litter, and other protected areas where sprays may not penetrate.

Eight Garden & Home

Eight® Insect Control products contain permethrin, a broad-spectrum insecticide that controls earwigs and many other common garden and landscape pests. It works by affecting the insect's nervous system and provides both contact control and residual protection on treated surfaces.

How to Use It for Earwigs
Apply to areas where earwigs hide during the day, including mulch beds, around foundations, under decks, along fence lines, and around ornamental plantings.
Treat the soil surface, mulch, and lower portions of plants where earwigs are active.
Apply in the late afternoon or evening, when earwigs begin emerging from their hiding spots to feed.
Focus on problem areas rather than spraying entire landscapes.
Reapply according to label directions if populations persist or after heavy rainfall.
Why It Works

Earwigs spend much of the day hiding in cracks, crevices, mulch, and other protected areas. When they crawl across treated surfaces at night, they come into contact with the insecticide and are controlled. This makes perimeter and harborage-area treatments particularly effective.

Best Practices
Reduce mulch depth and remove excess leaf litter before treatment to expose hiding spots.
Combine treatments with trapping methods, such as rolled newspaper traps, to monitor activity.
Address moisture issues, including overwatering and poor drainage, since earwigs are attracted to damp environments.
Use only as directed on the product label and avoid treating plants that are actively being visited by pollinators.

For severe infestations, combining habitat reduction with a targeted Eight® application can provide faster knockdown, while ongoing sanitation and moisture management help prevent earwigs from returning.

Sluggo Plus

Sluggo® Plus is a granular bait that controls earwigs, slugs, snails, sowbugs, pillbugs, and cutworms. Unlike sprays, it works by attracting pests to feed on the bait, making it especially effective for earwigs that spend most of the day hidden under mulch, leaf litter, rocks, and dense plant growth.

How to Use It for Earwigs
Evenly scatter the granules around garden beds, vegetable gardens, flower beds, and ornamental plantings where earwigs are active.
Apply around vulnerable plants, especially seedlings, leafy vegetables, strawberries, dahlias, marigolds, and other plants commonly damaged by earwigs.
For best results, apply in the evening when earwigs begin foraging.
Reapply according to label directions, especially after extended periods of heavy rainfall or when bait has been consumed.
Why It Works

Earwigs are attracted to the bait and feed on it while moving through the garden at night. Because the bait is spread throughout their feeding area, it can reach earwigs hiding in places where sprays may not penetrate, such as beneath mulch and dense ground cover.

Best Practices
Scatter bait lightly and evenly rather than creating piles.
Remove excessive mulch, leaf litter, and other hiding places to improve control.
Use traps to monitor activity and identify hotspots.
Combine bait applications with moisture management and garden sanitation for long-term prevention.
Benefits of Sluggo® Plus
Controls earwigs and several other common garden pests with one product.
Easy to apply around vegetables, flowers, and ornamentals.
Reaches hidden earwigs that are difficult to control with contact sprays.
Works well as part of an integrated pest management program that includes trapping and habitat reduction.

For heavy infestations, Sluggo® Plus can be paired with cultural controls such as reducing moisture and removing hiding places to provide more complete, long-lasting earwig management.

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Earwigs

How to Find & Prevent Earwigs

How to Defend Against Earwigs in the Garden

Earwig control products

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