That depends.

They are decomposers, so they are in there doing their job and helping break down the organic matter. That's good.

They can be a problem when/if they move into the vegetable garden. In my vegetable garden they eat green plants all the time, often eating through seedlings right after they sprout. They also love tomatoes in summer.

I don't mind the roly polies if they are in the compost pile or in heavily mulched areas outside the veggie garden.

In the veggie garden in late winter through mid-spring when I am planting a lot of stuff, I put out Slug-Go Plus and similar products to control them. Slug-Go Plus is organic and has two active ingredients: iron phosphate to control snails and slugs, and spinosad to control pill bugs and sow bugs. (It also controls cutworms in my garden, although I don't remember if it is labeled for cutwom control.) A lot of us organic gardeners started using Slug-Go (which is iron phosphate only) because it controlled pill bugs and sow bugs, so then the manufacturer did some research and added spinosad to (I assume) kill them even better. As near as I can tell by casual observation, plain Slug-Go was about as effective at killing sow bugs and pill bugs as Slug Go Plus is.

So, in the case of the roly polies, if they aren't causing any damage, I wouldn't worry about them. However, if you see them munching on plants, you probably want to do something about them.

Dawn

Thank you, Dawn, I'll try the Slug-Go. I was planting my tomatoe plants and working in the complost and it was full of sow bugs. Do you think they will hurt the tomatoe plants? This is my first year to have a compost pile so I wasn't sure whether to use it in my vegetable garden since it was full of roly polies or not. Well, too late I used the compost with all 21 of my tomatoe plants. This could be a hard lesson learned. :)

I just moved my compost to the the raised bed with tomatoes and peppers.

It's not completely finished compost--it's partially decomposed straw and that nice black earthy-smelling stuff, so I just mulched around the plants with it. It was full of roly polies.. My son and I picked out a few hundred and threw them into the field. (not my son's favorite way to spend the morning.) It's hard for me to squish them 'cause they were pets to me as a child. :)

In fact, I wish I had my kindergartners here to help. Finding roly polys was one of their favorite things to do on the playground.

ANYWAY, are their eggs in my compost too? Is this a concern. There's all sorts of other bugs too--worms, spiders, and things I don't recognize. Really, roly polies are everywhere.

Is Slug Go safe for worms? If they stay in the ground.

Hazel, Pillbugs and sowbugs are interesting little creatures that actually are arthropods. Well, technically they probably are isopods. They don't lay eggs in the soil or compost. They reproduce sexually with, um, activity between the female and male lasting up to a month, during which time he rides around on her back. His sperm fertilizes her eggs and the eggs pass into an egg pouch that is a part of her body. She will carry the eggs, and the young bugs they produce in that egg pouch, sort of like marsupials do. The young leave the pouch voluntarily once they reach a certain age or size, and it can vary. Most species of pillbugs and sowbugs go through many instars (up to 15) before reaching their mature size. So, having pillbug or sowbug eggs in your compost is not a concern. On the other hand, every pillbug or sowbug you see might be a female carrying around her entire current brood of offspring in her little pouch. Nope, no SUVs or minivans for these mamas.

Slug-Go and Slug-Go Plus will not harm earthworms. I always used Slug-Go in the early days and it worked great, but Slug-Go Plus (which is the same as Slug-Go but with Spinosad added) became my favorite after they released it. The Spinosad was added to make the product do an even better job of killing pill bugs and sow bugs. It works great.

If it is any comfort, my garden it totally full of pill bugs and sow bugs too and they are eating everything in sight---not just decomposing material but green plants, plant roots, cabbage leaves, squash fruit and tomato fruit. While they often focus on decomposing material, in a year when the population is huge, they will eat anything and everything. I found one in a tree eating a plum on Saturday when I was harvesting plums, which was a first....but, hey, it was fairly dry up there, unlike the ground and mulch below. I kinda hated to ruin its enjoyment of the plum after it had climbed all the way up there to eat it, so I just chunked the plum, along with its hungry little pest, off into the field. I am trying to stay out of my soaking wet garden (4+" of rain last week just made it a total mess) for another day, but intend to scatter Slug-Go Plus tomorrow.

Mine were clinging for dear life a week or so ago :)

I have to say I will never look at a rolly polly the same way again. Two things I don't want to be, a goose or a rolly polly.

Thanks for the roly poly sex ed lesson, Dawn. It was very informative. And it made me laugh.

I think the female sow and pill bugs should unionize or have a women's lib movement or something. First, they carry the male around for up to a month. Then, they carry around the eggs and the young bugs. It seems to me that the women are doing most of the work or, at least, carrying most of the load. I kinda feel sorry for them.

The class on sow bug and pill bug reproduction did not include any illustrations. Y'all noticed that, right? This is a family website after all.

I worked in the garden today and it has gazillions of both pill bugs and sow bugs in it. Also, many little tiny newly-hatched grasshoppers. Tomorrow I'm gonna be busy scattering Slug-Go Plus and Semaspore. I don't fret and worry about most pests as the beneficial insects will kill them, but I still have bad grasshopper memories from the last couple of drought years, and a few pill bugs and sow bugs do only a small amount of damage, but a lot of them are incredibly damaging.

Late this afternoon, Tim brought me a tiny little praying mantid. It was about 1/8" long. He presented it as it if was a gift, and I was not happy to see it. I told him "Take it away. Praying mantids each beneficial insects too!" He carefully released it away from me so I wouldn't kill it. Sometimes beneficial insects aren't completely beneficial and I don't like praying mantids because they are equal opportunity eaters---devouring both pest insects and beneficial ones.

Have bunches, too. Like Dawn, mine were eating healthy tomato plants' lower leaves. I kept thinking, Dawn says a plant can do fine without ALL its leaves. They've bunches of leaves. I realized that once the water drained away most, if not all, would return to eating things elsewhere. Dawn was right and so was I. I really hate these things.

I have used Spinosad on them, before. Works very well.

On another note regarding the flooding. All the worms sought out my hugel bed. That was really cool !

Any bed that I had raised has become a huge worm refuge too. I am glad we had higher places for them to go when the ground became supersaturated.

The pest population still is much lower than usual. I've got a bunch of lady bugs and middle-instar Assassin bugs prowling around looking for something or someone to eat. I've only seen one full-sized assassin bug and he was on the squash plants.

The tomato leaves will grow back, Bon, so I'm glad you're not worrying over them too much. Most tomato plants that are happy here in our climate ultimately grow tons more leaves than the really need, so they have a lot to spare when the pests get the munchies.

There's so many sow bugs and pill bugs that it is just ridiculous. I assume that as we continue to dry out, some of them will move back into the yard and woodland. We now have some spots where we can walk on soil that is dry on the surface, but not too many of them yet. A few more days with heat and a breeze like we had today, though, and substantial drying will occur.