Earwig Infestation

I came across a lively earwig party while poking around in one of the planter boxes this morning. I generally find earwigs pretty gross, and their name exacerbates my aversion, but I’ve gotten a little more used to them over the years, as they certainly like to hang around my garden. A little cursory research a while back gave me the sense they can be both harmful and helpful, eating both vegetables and other pests.

I busted up the party and detained one of the revelers, pictured here with a penny for proportion. As with many such gatherings in the human world, this shindig appeared to skew young, as everyone seemed about a quarter the size of the earwigs I usually encounter in the backyard. Anyway, I’ve been wondering who has been chowing down on the seedlings, and now I have a prime suspect.

I can’t tell how many gailan seedlings they might have eliminated, and those plants are probably struggling for additional reasons. They’ve had about six weeks in the ground, and after a nice initial burst of germination, they seem kind of stagnant. Also curious is the purple tint they have been taking on; it doesn’t look totally healthy, although I think I’ve seen this happen with kale to no ill effect.

The peculiar thing about this color change is that it hasn’t happened with the gailan that volunteered around the base of the mother plant. I finally removed her a few days ago (she’d been there for almost two years), revealing a carpet of bright green seedlings that seem to be in much better shape, despite spending so much time in the shade of their mom.

They’re in a separate box, so I can’t isolate a single variable to account for the difference. Nonetheless, I’m certainly curious to see how the two populations develop in comparison to each other.