Let's see...Hilter was a vegetarian
That did not make him a good person
When I see an earwig...I'm thinking: "Little Hitler!"
They are bad bad!

Earwigs are generally part of the 'cleanup gang', but will have a go at your plants if they can't find enough decomposing stuff. (keep in mind, I'm on the other side of the world and my earwigs may have different tastes)...
I get hordes of them in my summer garden, but while they make holes in mature leaves, I haven't had a problem with seedlings: in my garden, slugs and snails are always to blame. For everything.
Do you mulch? If not, I recommend you do. Feeds the earwigs, plants, worms etc and knocks back weeding and watering hugely. Breeds slugs and snails, but you can't win em all!
I need a t-shirt with I heart mulch.

Evil evil little things. In midsummer they are in my house, in the fridge, in the beds, and all over the garden. I don't know, maybe they take care of the aphids, and if their population is maintained I think it would not be such a problem. But it seems they have been coming in huge devastating numbers. I'm going out with the Sluggo Plus today.

They killed our dogwood tree back in New York, hundreds of them got under the bark. They get in Lettuce and Swiss Chard and eat it and ruin it. Have no redeeming features I know of.

Earwigs are no friend of mine. They hide in every dark crevice they possibly can around here, so whenever I see them - off with their heads!

Nasty things.

They eat plants. They drill holes in the fresh peaches and there will be groups of them around the pit. They invade the house.

To top it off, they will "bite" you and give you a painful pinch with their pincers.

Anything that bites me is not welcome in my garden.

so then, what do you do to get rid of them? i have neem, so i'm going to try that and catching them in newspaper. I've read diatomaceous earth works well, but I'm strapped for cash.

Today I saw a couple earwigs in my cucumbers, and then one in the kitchen! Disgusting! I wasn't able to get them in time though!

I just picked my first artichoke. Only found one in there! I let the choke float in water for about an hour before I cooked it.
I'll have to figure out what to put around the plant soon!

The rolled newspaper works quite well. However, the trick is to go out early in the morning - unroll the paper and either stomp or have a bucket of water handy to dump them in.

I had a bumper crop of cabbages this year (cool weather), without seeing too many cabbage worms, but the later cabbages became infested with earwigs, because I became a bit lax (perhaps because I'd already had a LOT of cole slaw and canned a LOT of kraut), we lost the remaining heads to the "wigs" - so fed them to the chickens (who - incidentally - LOVE "wigs" as a supplement to their diet.)

Bejay

I've had good luck with diatomaceous earth and wood ashes sprinkled around the plants, but they still seem to get in every crevice in my raised beds!

I think maybe only nuclear war will eradicate the hordes of earwigs. Other than that I've got nothin.

I seem to be very naive. Do we have them here in Zone 5? Where do I find out what they look like? Maybe that is what is doing the dirt with my green peppers. Thanks for any help. - Barb

I've got them in zone 5.

They are medium brown, close to the ground (very short legs)long thin body with a very obvious pincer on their tail.

They are very distinctive looking, you won't mistake them for anything else. They aren't usually out in the open.

We had alot of earwigs, so we cleaned up the outside of our garden so they don't have anything to hide in, And I think the birds eat them too. I rarely see any out there now :) DE also helps