Your garden soil contains both good and bad critters. Knowing them, you can make smart choices about soil care techniques that make the most sense for you and your organic garden.

All soil critters have one thing in common. They are …eating machines. When you meet any of the soil-dwellers shown on this page, squelch your impulse to squash. Let them go safely about their business. They are there to eat some of your problems and help your plants survive.

They are natural predators of slugs and snails. They give you a helping hand in exchange for their housing in the soil.

Fireflies. When you see fireflies, commonly called “lightning bugs”, twinkling on a summer evening, be glad for their hungry, soil-dwelling larvae. Firefly larvae prey on slugs, snails, cutworms, and mites.

Their larvae live in the soil for one to two years before pupating inside a hard brown casing. Firefly adults emerge after about ten days and live for up to one week.

But remember, because fireflies spend much time near the surface of the soil, they’re especially prone to the effects of garden chemicals. This includes chemical fertilizers whose high salt content is deadly to the creature’s egg and larval stage.

So, don’t use chemical fertilizers! Use natural ones like compost, seaweed mixes, and compost tea/fish

Fiery searcher. Many of the more than 3, 000 species of ground beetles in North America prey on slugs, snails, cutworms, and caterpillars. Few are as voracious as the inch long and extremely beneficial …fiery searcher. They can live up to three years. And, the adults will often climb trees in search of tent caterpillars to eat!

If you have caterpillars in your garden trees, look for their hunters – fiery searchers.

Millipedes. Can range from 1/2 inches long and move very slowly. Most feed only on decaying plants, breaking them down into organic matter for your soil. As predators, millipedes can eat many kinds of soil insects.

Millipedes are useful as scavengers. The feed on decaying organic matter and often develop high populations in mulches, manure, grass clippings, leaf litter, and soils high in humus.

Down – ’N – Dirty Soil Dwellers

It pays to recognize the bad guys when you run into them. It gives you an option of tossing them out onto bare ground where a hungry bird can find them.

Symphylans are pests that eat the roots of asparagus, cucumber, lettuce, radish, and tomato seedlings. Sometimes called “garden centipedes,” symphylans resemble true centipedes but are only 1/4 inch long with 12 pairs of legs

June or May beetle grub feeds on the roots of strawberries and potatoes during the spring and summer and can grow as big as 1 inch long. The grubs may remain in the soil for two years or more before emerging.

Cutworms are most troublesome and widespread in North America. The cutworms feed just below the soil surface (or just above it), severing the stems of seedlings and transplants. Dig in the soil around the base of an injured plant and you’re likely to find this culprit.

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Yours truly for a great garden with outstanding veggies and flowers.

Polly-organic gardener