Centipedes

Centipedes use tunnels and cavities in the soil to live in and although they can't produce their own tunnels they often find existing ones to live in.

To identify a centipede the adult ones have 12 pairs of legs and are about 1cm or 10mm long.

Their typical foodstuff ranges from soil and manure to yeast and dead plant substance.

Although this sounds fairly harmless, in order to reproduce they must eat living and fresh plant material.

Centipedes prefer to munch the roots of young plants at reproduction time and for this reason the damage is not always immediately obvious.

However, what this leads on to is damage to the roots which in time reduces the growth and overall yield from the plants.

Once the roots have experienced this trauma they become a welcome home for fungi and bacteria to cause further problems.

If you are using potting compost then place it in a container of water.

If any centipedes are present they will quite simply just rise to the surface of the water from where they can be removed and eliminated.

Steaming the soil will prevent them from spreading any further and the most effective method is steaming the soil from its base as this prevents them from going any deeper within