Unbelievable amount of arthopods

Hello friends, I hope all is well for you.

Does anybody know what might be causing an over population of an unspecified arthopod. In a garden plot, digging into a meter square piece of earth uncovered about 250 of these guys.

The person who's garden it is killed off each big with a squish. I think that's half the battle.
The rest of the solution that I have offered is to inoculate the earth with some EM in the hope of balancing the soil life.

Although should I be concerned the sugars involved will only fuel the large family of whatever arthopod this is?

Any other ideas on cause and remedy?

Pleasant days
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Sounds like a chicken deficiency, to me. OR an area lacking lizard/frog/toad/snake habitat.

Are they causing problems? Chewing up any plant leaves/stems/roots? Some arthropods are great decomposers and soil aerators. Them being there might be beneficial, like weeds on dirt.

If they are these guys, they are just part of the cycle of life:



My garden has unbelievable hordes of these and I have only found them to be a problem when things get too dry and there isn't enough soft rotting mulch for them to eat.  Only under those conditions do they seem to go after living plants; they prefer to eat rotting vegetation.

Ludi my mind went to the same place. Unknown arthropod? Probably pillbug. I wonder if that's a Texan thing?  

When I'm raising young chickens I scoop these up by the handful for them - the chicks go nuts!

I love roly-poly's!

Tyler Ludens wrote:When I'm raising young chickens I scoop these up by the handful for them - the chicks go nuts!

I agree, the best way is to have some chickens running loose to take care of the over abundance. As long as I've been alive (60+) and been gardenng, I have always experienced at one time or another an overpopulation of one type of insect or another (snails, wasps, grasshoppers, etc). Oddly enough however, some recent research has expose how insects period are becoming scarce in many areas, even in protected national parks where toxic chemicals are not used. So while over abundance may be a monir annoyance at times, in our modern age of negative news like that from Germany, abundance could be almost celebrated.

Obsession with Biodiversity is overshadowing loss of Bioabundance

Cody DeBaun wrote:Sounds like a chicken deficiency, to me. OR an area lacking lizard/frog/toad/snake habitat.

Are they causing problems? Chewing up any plant leaves/stems/roots? Some arthropods are great decomposers and soil aerators. Them being there might be beneficial, like weeds on dirt.

Agreed, where are the predators. When I wrote about this latest science fad of demonozing earthworms for killing forests in North America, one of the authors from University of Minnesota posted a comment on my post and flamed me for not having the academic credentials he and hs colleagues had for the subject. This is a common tactic done by such Elites when confronted with their own flaws and lack of common sense. A big part of my criticism to him was, "Did you even consider to look for lack of predators ?? You know like, birds, frogs, moles, etc ??"  They never looked at or addressed lack of predators in their research. also he wouldn't address the fact that Night Crawlers had always been there since the 1960s when I lived near there as a kid. Anyway I would look for natural enemies of the insects or lack of them.

Kevin Franck wrote: ...one of the authors from University of Minnesota posted a comment on my post and flamed me for not having the academic credentials he and hs colleagues had for the subject.

Anytime anyone chooses to argue from authority, you know they are shaky ground.  A good argument stands on its own merit, it doesn't need a string of alphabet soup after a person's name to lend it credence.  Anytime anyone does that to me, I simply ask them to address my stance, rather than my credentials.  That usually ends it, and if not they look silly for continuing.

In this case of roly-poly's, rather than looking for a cure, I would ask myself if there is a problem.

Are they causing problems? Chewing up any plant leaves/stems/roots? Some arthropods are great decomposers and soil aerators. Them being there might be beneficial, like weeds on dirt.

Well they want to plant, and when digging down a few inches there is a literal mound of them. Not sure chicken would get to them naturally. And over here people generally don't want chicken pooping on their patio :p

I guess the whole system of creating a garden just for looks is not viable.

I have these pretty much as a plague. Maybe keeping a pet chicken that gets used to a cat harness and a leash would be a good thing. I could keep it cooped on the legal part of my property (we have some weird covemant rules) and bring my pet to be with me in other parts of the yard as long as it's with me. Organic bug control, that poor hen would be rolling, not walking....

That makes sense, don't know much about your situation but if predators are out I can see the need for alternative solutions.

One approach that might be helpful if to look at it much like Geoff Lawton talks about looking at weed germination conditions: these critters seem to show up where there is mounded decomposing matter, and they seem to aerate previously dense/compacted soil. Maybe doing that job- some tilling, maybe double digging a garden bed- would spread the organic matter and aerate the soil. They might not find it as interesting, then..

DE would probably work too- I dunno if it would pierce their shell as well as it might for a roach or an ant, but pillbugs are very moisture dependent, if they get too dry it interferes with their ability to breathe.