Every once in a while I see someone on here insist that they only eat dead matter and resort to eating fruit only if there is an absence of it and nothing else for them to eat. There is plenty of wood and other things for them to eat here. They gravitate to the strawberries.
by HealthWealthFoodie
33 Comments
They are just sniffing it. Nothing to worry about
I will fight anyone till the day I die that says they don’t eat living plants. I’ve had countless plants killed by pill bugs.
I had the same problem. Straw mulch helped a lot.
those appear to be pill bugs eating strawberries
I’m an organic gardener/ farmer. Pill bugs are basically my only pest. Them and aphids on some crops. Diatomaceous earth works great though at least on the pill bugs.
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I’ve noticed that something else has to take a bite of the strawberry first – a slug, a bird – and then it’s like blood in the water. The pill bugs move in like the slow-moving land-sharks they are.
I’ve always called them potato bugs! I’ve never heard pill bug before. Regional name differences are some of my favourite things!
Huh, wild. I know different locations have different species, I wonder if that’s the difference? We’ve got a lot of pillbugs in my area but I’ve never seen them eat anything living like that.
Sometimes the reddit “experts” are 100% wrong and that is the case with pillbugs. “Oh they only eat organic matter as a first resort”
No, they don’t have rules, just an appetite. The only thing that really stopped them was summer heat. But then the earwigs came. I used sluggo plus and that worked better than anything else.
I’m not saying they don’t, but some bugs are opportunistic. If the strawberry started to rot, from being on the soil, it opens it up to many more insects.
They are just inspecting the fruit
Fuckers eat my bean and cucumber seedlings too
They decimate my bean sprouts every year unless I am 100% vigilant with the diamataceous earth.
I have had issues with pill bugs decimating my strawberries in the past. Have a fantastic fix to share: use those little mesh bags (that you might find at weddings with small amounts of candies in them), put them on the green strawberries and tug the drawstring tight. The pill bugs can’t get through.
Drawbacks: they require you to put a little bag on each berry and it’s kind of a pain in the ass. But it works!
Nice of them to all gang up on one strawberry instead of taking a bite out of each one, I guess? I had a polite squirrel like that, it would just sit in my apple tree and eat an entire apple and then leave.
Opportunists
I have started killing pill bugs. I have seen them eating my plants this year.
They eat soft stuff. They have eaten plenty of my seedlings.
They decimated mine last year, there were hundreds of them in my raised bed. Any tips on getting rid of them
I need to save this photo lol. I wasn’t believed either. It’s too bad chickens don’t like to eat them yet love the roaches that ofc only come out after the chickens go to bed.
The woodlouse spider is the predator to pill bugs! They are absolutely terrifying looking but please don’t kill them because they eat these guys!
Everyone knows those are roly-polys…
/s
Top dressing a thin layer of sand around the strawberries seems to help keep pill bugs and slugs away in my garden.
Pill bug is the common name of a whole family of inverts, some species are more prone to eating living plants than others, some even eat rotting flesh.
They can definitely be a pest of strawberries and other crops, especially in wet conditions. In general however they are beneficial to soil health, increasing soil carbon content and microbial diversity.
Well, they’re hungry. Get more mulch and detritus
#From this day forth you refer them to rollie pollies.
Who is going to tell the pill bugs that show up in my garden, that they don’t eat strawberries? Or everything else for that matter? lol
Side note: I found that if you go get a large round potato and carve a hole in the side, then scoop out some of the inside, it becomes a roly-poly hotel. They love it. Then you take the potato full of bugs, knock it out on the ground and give them a good old grind with your heel. It cleared my pill bug infestation within about 2 weeks.
**First rule of strawberries is everything eats strawberries**
I still have to wonder though if they are initiating this damage themselves or are opportunistically getting into the damage that the slug, also pictured, has already produced. Like are they boring into the fruit or are they just slapping up the juice or rotting portions the slugs are leaving behind? I have seen this phenomenon as well but I tend to see it in heavy slug seasons so it’s not clear to me if it’s confounded still. What I don’t see is just the pill bugs and no slugs then still yielding damage, at least not yet. Maybe we need to actually test this.
Some pill bugs infested my spinach plants around the roots this season. I removed them and the spinach seems to be doing better now.
How do you know they are eating and this isn’t some giant pillbug gangbang?
Whoever said this was dumb
Purge the ground, then plant in it..use charcoal water for insect repellent