Each season presents its own unique challenges, and there is always a flower variety that I tend to hone in on and want to improve, which typically means increasing the number of plants growing. I had three top contenders this year, but the ones relevant to today’s story are dahlias and zinnias.

We decided to double our dahlia patch this season, planting 2,700 tubers in our small plot. We have also greatly increased our zinnia patch. Typically, we have one row of zinnias, with maybe a handful peppered in with some cosmos for a later succession, no more than four to five hundred plants. This year, we tucked in nearly 2,000 zinnias.

How could we resist with so many incredible, swoon-worthy new varieties becoming available?

We planted healthy, vibrant seedlings and tubers in late May. They were happy, green, and didn’t skip a beat! Within a couple of weeks of the tubers being in their bed, tender green shoots began to emerge. New growth was being seen as the zinnias prepared to take off. All was well until it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, something else began to emerge as well… earwigs. When we see damage, we question if it’s a new pest, but it always comes back down to earwigs.

While doing our rounds in the garden, we noticed tender leaves chomped at and riddled with holes each morning. The zinnia rows were beginning to get patchy as the earwigs decimated the transplants.

Here lies some of my love/hate with dahlias and zinnias, especially the zinnias; the earwigs love them, which I don’t love.

We sprayed and placed traps, yet little by little, sections of plants were eaten to a nub. It was heartbreaking and frustrating. I became a madwoman, going out at night with a headlamp and a spray bottle to get the culprits… there were just so many of them this year! When it comes to earwigs, I have yet to find a spray that works well against them, other than making a contact spray from castile soap and vegetable oil.

Most of the plants began to outgrow the damage, but there was still a back section of the zinnia patch getting hit hard, no matter how many times I replaced plants. The dahlias started to bloom, and petals were getting chewed, and I don’t want to hassle with organza bags on thousands of dahlias.

The thing is, I couldn’t put my finger on what was so different this season to cause such an explosion of earwigs. If anything, we had made progress that should have decreased their population.

We made one change but didn’t think much of it until a Blomma Flower Farm’s Zinnia Breeding Workshop student mentioned her chickens' helpfulness in the garden: pest management.

We had put our chickens in their coop, aka “chicken prison,” back in spring. The past few years, we have always let them roam the field. Well, last March, they decided to keep jumping the fence and insisted on crossing the road, which I think we know the answer to the proverbial question of why the chickens crossed the road: they wanted to become chicken nuggets. That is it. They had a death wish. Between that and being boogers in the peony patch… they needed to be locked up. I knew they were great at snacking on bugs, watching them fight over caterpillars and grubs, and going nuts for earwigs when we disturbed a nest of them, but I didn’t realize how many pests they were consuming.

Despite the chickens wreaking their own kind of havoc, the earwigs were a bigger problem. It was time to let the chicken thugs out on parole.

Chickens Out on Parole

Within minutes, the chickens went nuts. Scratching, digging, rolling on trays, in crates, and in newly created wells for the roses—they are absolute menaces. The girls and I threw as many seedlings back into the propagation houses as fast as we could before they became the chickens' next victims.

The chicken thugs have barely been out two weeks and I am seeing all the damage I anticipated, along with a great decrease in the earwig population. So, they are doing everything they do best, helping and being destructive.

I realize that we need to battle bugs with natural predators in the field. There is too much to manage on our own, and the natural predators do best. The ladybirds are much more efficient at combating aphids than any spray I can grab. However, when it comes to the earwigs this year, even all the natural predators seem to need some extra help.

Well, the chickens are lucky they’re cute, but it is time for a better solution.

Who are you gonna call? Bug-Busters!

Ducks are known to be amazing bug foragers in the garden and are more manageable than chickens. For starters, ducks don’t dig like chickens do. They can be a little bit of a bull in a china shop when it comes to trampling seedlings or snacking on tender growth, but at least they don’t dig up peony roots.

I love ducks. We have had ducks on and off since our first garden, and I always sold having them to Graham by insisting on their pest management abilities. In the past, purchasing ducklings was more of what I would call “impulse purchases,” seeing them at the local feed store with their adorable beady eyes and whispering quacks making their way into our hearts and quickly in the box going home with us. We never researched the breeds we purchased. Just went by cuteness in the moment of which ducks were available then and there.

After losing our last round from a predator and the rest flying away during a thunderstorm, we didn’t want to rush into having ducks again. I didn’t want to rush having ducks again. However, after our battle with the earwigs and the battle with the naughty chickens, we decided to welcome ducklings into the family, as well as the right kind of ducklings. Graham let me have full reign on this little side project, and so I ran with it.

I always wanted Indian Runner ducks, but they aren’t a typical breed we see locally. Indian Runner ducks are considered one of the top foraging duck breeds; they are fast, run instead of waddle, and are slimmer and lighter than other breeds of ducks. My hope in having Indian Runner ducks is that they are more agile in the field, therefore causing less damage while squeezing between the mature plants and efficiently snacking on pests. Indian Runner ducks also have wings that are too small for their bodies, so they can’t fly away from us.

I also was more selective on the color of the Indian Runner ducks I wanted. We have raccoons, skunks, coyotes, owls, hawks—you name it. We have lost not only ducks and chickens to these predators but many cats. The lone survivor cat we have is our black cat, Moo-Moo. All the other cats with white fur haven’t made it. Typically, the chickens we lose first are the lighter colored ones, and the ducks we’ve had in the past also had lighter feathers. So, I looked to Moo-Moo and decided to get darker-colored ducks: chocolate, blue, and black. Not only do they look beautiful and unique, but I’m hoping it will also allow them to better stay out of the view of nighttime predators in conjunction with better predator-proofing their pen.

Meet the Bug-Busters

The six little ducklings arrived late last week, and we all felt like Billy from "Where The Red Fern Grows" when he went to pick up Little Ann and Old Dan from the post office. Okay, it was less of a trek, but it still felt special to go pick up our new ducklings from the post office. Soft quacks and rustling from the box, we couldn’t wait to lift the box's flaps and see them.

They have already won our hearts. This breed is a little more high-strung than other breeds we have had, but no less sweet. For now, they are in a tote in the living room until they are big enough to be moved into a brooder in the garage, which is really just our big dahlia wash station that conveniently can double as a brooder! Since we decided on ducklings late for our growing season, they won’t be much help this year out in the field, but once spring hits and those earwigs emerge once again, they will be in full bug-slaying mode!

So for now, we have been enjoying their baby phase, snuggling and letting them sleep on us. Slowing down just enough to enjoy our adorable new helpers that are about the cutest pesticide I can think to have!