pill bugs eating my plant?

[linlaoboo]

Should I use some products to kill the pill bugs that roll in the ball? I'm seeing more of them in my grow bed where I have ficuses, a chinese elm and some junies. We had some rain yesterday and this morning I find a lot of babies and some are eating away at one of my ficus retusa's leaf.

 

[jk_lewis]

Pill bugs almost never eat live plant tissue -- maybe an ailing root here and there. They eat dead, moist, decaying matter in the soil. If you have a lot of them you may be watering too much and that may be the cause of whatever problems you are having.

The short answer is NO.

 

[linlaoboo]

thanks for confirming that. I also saw a youtube video mentioning pill bugs occationally take a feeding on young tender plants which is exactly what they're doing on my ficus cutting. It's good they don't enjoy the taste of older plants =)

 

[Eric Schrader]

You may find that the pill bugs know something that you do not. I have seen them all of a sudden swarming over a part of a plant and find later that the part they were on was dead but hadn't looked dead yet. They ate all the bark off a crabapple that I planted in the ground - at first I was annoyed and then intrigued. They also at the same time each year eat all the old growth out of one of my succulent plants (no idea what species it is as it was a gift.)

I never paid much attention to pill bugs when I lived in NorCal, but since I moved I've noticed them a lot more. They don't seem to eat live healthy plant tissue - but they will eat parts that are past their prime or that have dead parts.