The most effective DIY earwig trap is a low-sided can filled with a thin layer of vegetable oil and soy sauce, sunk into the ground at soil level. Earwigs are drawn to the soy sauce, fall into the oil, and drown because they can’t climb back out. A few of these scattered through your garden, combined with simple shelter traps, can make a real dent in an earwig population without any chemicals.
Why Traps Work on Earwigs
Earwigs feed at night and spend the day hiding in dark, moist spots: under stones, inside mulch, along fences, in woodpiles, and at the base of plants. They actively seek out tight crevices and damp shelter once the sun comes up. Every effective DIY trap exploits one of these two behaviors, either luring earwigs with a scent attractant or offering an irresistible daytime hiding spot that you can collect and empty.
They tend to cause the most damage to dahlias, zinnias, marigolds, hostas, hollyhock, lettuce, strawberries, roses, and seedling beans. If you’re finding ragged holes in those plants and the damage appears overnight, earwigs are a likely culprit.
The Oil and Soy Sauce Trap
This is the highest-performing DIY option. You need a low-sided can (a tuna or cat food can works perfectly), soy sauce, vegetable oil, and water.
- Fill the can about one-third full with water.
- Add roughly 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. The soy sauce is the attractant. Its fermented smell draws earwigs in from several feet away.
- Pour a thin layer of vegetable oil on top. You want just enough to cover the surface. Some guides suggest a quarter-inch layer, but a thinner film works fine and uses less oil. The oil coats the earwigs when they fall in, preventing them from swimming or climbing out.
Dig a small hole and sink the can so its rim sits flush with the soil surface. This is important. Earwigs crawl along the ground, and a raised can creates a wall they may not climb over. At soil level, they walk right in. Place traps near the plants you’re trying to protect, along fences, beside ground cover, and around shrubbery. The University of California’s integrated pest management program recommends distributing numerous traps throughout the yard rather than relying on one or two.
Checking and Emptying
Check oil traps every morning. If you leave them sitting, you’ll just end up with a stagnant can of dead earwigs that stops catching new ones. Dump the contents, rinse the can, and refill it. After a few days of consistent trapping, you should notice the catch numbers dropping as the local population thins out.
Shelter Traps: Cardboard, Newspaper, and Hose
Shelter traps don’t use bait. Instead, they mimic the dark, tight spaces earwigs seek out during daylight hours. You set them out in the evening, and by morning the earwigs have moved in. Then you collect and dispose of them.
The simplest version is a length of rolled corrugated cardboard. The tiny channels inside corrugated cardboard are exactly the kind of narrow crevice earwigs love. Roll a piece into a tube, secure it with a rubber band, and lay it on the soil near your affected plants just before dark. Crumpled damp newspaper works on the same principle, though it tends to catch fewer earwigs per trap.
Short sections of garden hose (about 12 inches long) or bamboo tubes are another option. Lay them on the ground in the evening. In the morning, hold the tube over a bucket of hot soapy water and tap the earwigs out. The soapy water kills them quickly.
You can boost the effectiveness of any shelter trap by adding a food bait inside. Trials at Colorado State University found that wheat bran and wheat germ both work well as earwig attractants. A pinch of oatmeal or bran inside a cardboard tube or a small cardboard box with quarter-inch holes punched near the bottom turns a passive shelter into an active lure.
How Often to Collect Shelter Traps
Collect shelter traps every two to three days at most. If you forget, you’re not trapping earwigs; you’re housing them. Bag up the cardboard or newspaper with the earwigs inside and throw it in the trash, or shake the earwigs into soapy water and reuse the trap material if it’s still in decent shape.
Traps That Don’t Work Well
Not every DIY method you’ll find online performs equally. Beer traps, which are excellent for slugs, tend to be disappointing for earwigs. The Old Farmer’s Almanac tested several methods side by side and found their beer trap caught nothing. A toilet paper tube stuffed with straw caught only one earwig. A damp newspaper stuffed into an upside-down flowerpot also came up empty. The oil and soy sauce method and the simple rolled-cardboard trap consistently outperform these alternatives.
Complementary Controls
Traps work best as part of a broader strategy. Earwigs thrive in clutter, so removing their daytime hiding spots reduces the overall population. Clear out garden debris, stacked pots, tools left on the ground, and anything else sitting on damp soil. Mulch is tricky because you need it for your plants, but scouting it regularly and replacing it when it gets thick and damp helps keep earwig numbers manageable.
Diatomaceous earth (a fine powder made from fossilized algae) can be sprinkled around plant bases. It works by scratching earwigs’ soft bodies as they crawl across it, causing them to dehydrate. The catch is that it stops working as soon as it gets wet, so you’ll need to reapply after rain or heavy dew. Neem oil has the same limitation: it only kills on direct contact and washes off easily. Neither is a standalone solution, but both add another layer of control alongside your traps.
One thing worth knowing is that earwigs aren’t purely destructive. They eat aphids, mites, and other soft-bodied pests. In a garden with a moderate earwig population, they may actually be helping more than hurting. Trapping makes the most sense when their numbers get high enough that plant damage becomes noticeable, not as a preventive measure when you spot one or two.
Putting It All Together
For a garden bed under active earwig pressure, the most effective setup is a combination of oil-and-soy-sauce kill traps sunk at soil level and a few rolled-cardboard shelter traps placed near your most vulnerable plants. Set the shelter traps out each evening, empty them each morning, and check the oil traps daily. Within a week or two of consistent trapping, you should see a clear reduction in both the number of earwigs caught and the amount of overnight plant damage. Once catches drop to near zero, you can pull the traps and only redeploy if damage returns.