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when woodlice attack,sweetcorn

ninnin Posts: 216
in Fruit & veg
I have raised beds and bark chip paths and a very disgusting healthy woodlouse population.😒🐛 Last time i grew sweet corn🌽 the lovely cons were full of woodlice when you peeled them open and totally inedible. The population is out of control🐝 I don't mind the odd one it really doesn't bother me, 🐛 but pick up a pot and there are hundreds and they make me itch thinking about them there are so many they are like fleas.🐛 Advice on really hitting the population hard.🙈😠
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  • plant pauperplant pauper Posts: 6,904
    https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=723
    This seems to confirm what I've read before that woodlice are a sign of a healthy garden. They only feed on what is already dead. Perhaps your corn had a problem before the woodlice got to it.

  • ninnin Posts: 216
    I have read this as well but they are all over everything. They will go for healthy pants as well as decay in matter just not normally enough to cause a problem. Where the corn was tight I the shell it was fine his at the ends where the lice came was very off putting they hadn't really nibbled just living there.
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    Ah, woodlice in your pants are a whole different matter.
  • ninnin Posts: 216
    Oh dear arthritis and typing on a phone has given me woodlice in my pants what am I to do😍
    Fire said:
    Ah, woodlice in your pants are a whole different matter.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    edited May 2018
    nin said:
    Oh dear arthritis and typing on a phone has given me woodlice in my pants what am I to do😍
    Fire said:
    Ah, woodlice in your pants are a whole different matter.
    Put a hedgehog in your pants and it will eat them.

    Note to our friends in the US:. "pants" in the UK means underpants. We call outer pants "trousers".
  • Blue OnionBlue Onion Posts: 2,995
    I had a chicken years ago that used to eat them.. and slugs(!).. the slugs would end up like peanutbutter, stuck to the roof of her beak.  🤢

    I've never had a woodlouse bother a single bit of living plant, either in my veg garden or elsewhere.  I don't get many worms, and they do the work of breaking down material in my garden. 

    As nin suggested, I wonder if something else got into the sweet corn first.  Earwigs or grubs?
    Utah, USA.
  • josusa47josusa47 Posts: 3,530
    We already have a Snail Lovers' Society on this Forum (though they've been a bit quiet the last week or so, must be the dry weather).   I'm thinking of starting a Woodlouse Lovers' Society.  Any takers?
  • ninnin Posts: 216
    Not me😠
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I remember a hundred years ago when I was on my first day in a new job. I felt something tickling my big toe. I couldn't take my shoe off for reasons that were obvious to me then .
    Eventually, I had a private moment and took off my shoe, tapped it and out popped a wood louse - yuk!
    In London. Keen but lazy.
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