I agree with the remedy of sprinkling Diatomaceous earth around for pill bugs/roly poly bugs. You can usually find it at Home Depot.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Saf...

http://www.richsoil.com/diatom...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

They sometimes chew through stems of small seedlings or munch on parts of plant foliage around here. I've only tried putting a piece of wood over a moist spot of soil, then gather up the rollie polies that congregate under it later. I might try the wood ash idea, since I have a half whisky barrel filled with strawberry plants. They do chew on the strawberries sometimes. And maybe I'll try the beer thing, also. We don't drink beer, but I could buy a cheap can of beer just for this.

I know the wood ash works, but of course not everyone has it available all the time.

Rollie Pollie bugs or Pill bugs love wet areas so if you want then to go away make sure you keep the area clean and dry. It could really be a pain because they mainly eat veggies. Though good thing about these little bugs is they do not contaminate food or spread disease.

Welcome Alice and Katherine.

I have never had any problems with the Pill Bugs in my garden but I do know Sliggo Plus is supposed to eliminate them.
http://www.gardeners.com/slugg...

A couple of things:

If memory serves, pill bugs and roly-poly bugs are both different species of woodlice. I would be surprised if they were the ones directly responsible for eating the fresh foliage as they typically dine on decaying plant matter. That said, I can attest to the fact that they will move in on things after another critter (for me this is typically cutworms and slugs) have already had a go at them and opened them up.

To try and control them without pesticides I would recommend making sure that any mulch is pulled back away from your plants that are in the ground and echo the use of diatomaceous earth. It may also help to water in the early morning so that the area around the plants has time to dry before nightfall when the little buggers come out.

For potted plants or heavy infestation, if you are willing to spray, I would recommend the Bayer 3 in 1 insect, disease and mite control. You can use this as a spray specifically on infested plants, and for the potted ones, I would mix some up and use it as somewhat of a soil drench. I use it for spot treating daylilies that may come in with rust or get other pests but it does have the benefit of keeping the woodlice away, especially from foliage that is dying if should the plants go dormant in the summer.

>> That's not going to happen here. The beer is for us!

>> We don't drink beer, but I could buy a cheap can of beer just for this.

I'm also fond of beer, but I have a solution. I buy pretty good beer for myself, and the cheapest, vilest brew for the slugs. THAT, I don't mind sharing.

And maybe, when I work off that nasty stuff in little slug swimming pools, I'll make a batch of Slug Beer:

2 cups warm water,
1 pkg. dry yeast,
1 teaspoon sugar,
1 teaspoon salt (or less)

My chickens love the little pill bugs - but they would also love the tender plants, so not a solution.

There's a type of spider that eats rolypolies by the gazillions. Only problem is that this spider looks really creepy when it's a "pregnant" female (female full of eggs). It's called a Woodlice Hunter (Dysdera crocata). I have tons of this spider throughout my yard because of the amount of mulch I use for my yard (my entire yard is mulched, so I have lots of wood-loving bugs & non-bugs, and rolypolys are non-bugs.. they're actually a type of crustacean if I remember correctly). If you're freaked out by spiders, do NOT click this link.

http://www.spiderjoe.com/image...

Creepy looking spiders, but keeps the rolypolys in check. Now if I could just figure out what eats centipedes...

Great recipe Rick! That's a lot cheaper than even the cheapest, most vile of beers!

RickCorey said:>> That's not going to happen here. The beer is for us!
>> We don't drink beer, but I could buy a cheap can of beer just for this.
I'm also fond of beer, but I have a solution. I buy pretty good beer for myself, and the cheapest, vilest brew for the slugs. THAT, I don't mind sharing.

Don't drink alcohol, so really wouldn't know vile from good TBH. But, when you say cheapest, vilest, I can't help but think PBR or Busch or Colt 45... I wonder, would Boones Farm work? I have a bottle that's like.. 3? years old. Strawberry Daiquiri flavor. Was given to me, but 1) I don't drink alcohol & 2) am allergic to strawberry, so I'm not gonna drink it. hehehehe, evil thought here: put it in the hummingbird feeder!!! It's bright red....

I think "Colt 45" is close to what I found. It was called something like a "malt beverage" so it didn't even meet the legal definition of beer.

>> Boones Farm

I think it's 50-50 whether it would repel them attract them! Drown them, yes, once they fell in.

P.S. I cut the bottoms off small, clear plastic soda bottles to use as slug-drowning saucers. They blend visually into the soil, especially once some algae is growing on them. I don't worry about pushing them down into the soil - slugs seem able and willing to climb up and in.

I think it's the "yeasty" smell that attracts them, as if they expect to find rotting vegetation once they dive in. Usually I would expect beer to be yeastier than wine, but "things" like Boone's Farm synthehol might be so sweet that yeast falling into the saucer would go to work.

If there is too much alcohol, the yeast can't grow and metabolize, so "fortified" malt beverage or pseudo-wine might not be as good as weaker stuff.

Maybe shreds of old lettuce leaves floating on the surface would be an attractant, since slugs eat rotting vegetation as well as our favorite seedlings.

maybe little paper parasols would help?

A slug-spa?

Hehe! I LIKE the look of that spider! Guess I'm just that kind of person!

Bonehead said:A slug-spa?

I don't have slugs here, so don't have to worry about it. I think I've seen.. 4? 5? slugs since I bought my house in '05. Need moisture to have slugs..

Linda - I like spiders. I *love* jumping spiders & have played with them when I find them. I've seen some absolutely beautiful ones here. But if you like spiders, google "Peacock spider" or check out this link from Scientific America: http://www.scientificamerican.... WARNING: SPIDER PICTURES. But, personally, I don't like these rolypoly eaters crawling around my bathroom when I gotta tinkle at 2am and I see this monstrous speeder coming at me (technically, the spider's trying to run from the cats and hide behind the toilet or under something in the bathroom). They're bright cream & red in color and look pretty ferocious. WARNING: SPIDER PICTURE: http://ps-garden.s3.amazonaws.... That's the spider I get in my yard & bathroom (not too many in the bathroom since the cats seem to love to nom them up). But these spiders can get to be about 1.5-2" from front leg to hind leg & their abdomen is usually quite swollen.. probably 'cuz they're fat from all the rolypolys! But with this picture, you can see those massive mandibles! Yikes! Never been bit by one, so can't tell if they hurt or not.

If I were handier, I would be happy to make tiny hot-tub-whirlpools for slugs, with air bubbles and water jets and everything.

As long as they slip in and then DROWN!

Imagine drowning in a barrel of beer!

It doesn't actually sound too bad, until you remember:

"a barrel of BAD beer"!

Bad being in the eye (or throat) of the beholder. I can't abide any of today's craft beers, having grown up sneaking Dad's home brew and doing a stint myself in our much younger poor years. Give me a good cold bottle of Bud any day, and I'm happy. I can see through it, it's smooth, and it tastes good -- all what we sought after with our home brewing but invariably missed. My Dad would be particularly appalled at the cloudy hefeweisers (sp) of today. But, to each their own.

PNW brewers all seem to aim for very strong flavors and amber is about the lightest color that's common. (I like it, but also wish I could get some light, bright IPA that wasn't all "balanced" with malty and dark flavors.)

The favored PNW beers of this era are the exact opposite of every beer that I encountered in Texas back in the 1980s. I puzzled everyone when I asked if they had any dark beers. The closest anyone came to admitting they knew about "dark beer" was one waitress who figured that "dark" meant "not Bud Light", so she offered regular Bud as a "dark beer".

Since then I've guessed that Texas is so hot that they need hydrating beer, which I think of as "one part beer plus two parts water".

But it all drowns slugs. And I like Bud OK - I just like craft beer five times better.

Once I was a New Guy in a West Australian bar, and asked what they had on tap (that they would call "bitter", I guess. Try marketing "bitter" in the USA!)

Anyway, the bartender said "we have Emu Bitter and (some other brand that I forget)" .

It was like the scene in "An American Werewolf in London".
Everyone within earshot stopped talking and looked at me.
Luckily, I guessed right and asked for Emu Bitter.

Then everyone smiled and I was OK with them. It seemed that western Australia drinks Emu Bitter and eastern Australia drinks That Other Brand.