Roly-Poly Pill Bugs

 Are they Good, Bad, or Who Cares?

🪲 Garden Pests| by Guy Saldiveri | 02/15/2026

We’ve all seen them. We’ve all played with them. But what exactly are they? Well, they’re actually land-based crustaceans. 

Believe it or not, they belong to the same extended family—well, they’re more like cousins to shrimp, crabs, and lobsters—although I don’t think I would want to host a boil for them.

They’re native to the Mediterranean, but we’ve spread them all over the globe.

We’ve seen them around the house, in our compost piles, and especially in our gardens. The “in our gardens” part is probably where this really hits home. We have a tendency to want to eradicate just about every bug that invades our soil. In some cases, this is completely warranted. In the case of our “mostly friendly” pill bug, we might want to reconsider. 

For the most part, pill bugs are good guys. Their primary function is to eat dead and decaying organic matter. They do a great job turning mulch, leaves, and compost into nutrient-rich soil. They also have the ability to take in heavy metals. They remove zinc, copper, and lead from the soil and crystallize them in their guts. This helps clean up the environment while providing lots of good for our gardens.

The trouble starts when you have an overabundance of these guys and they start looking at the tender seedlings that were just planted. I usually have more of an issue at the very beginning stages of the season. Plants are young, stems are soft, and tasty leaves are in easy reach close to the soil. 

I also like to put mulch in my containers. The plants love it, but it’s something those little bugs love as well. It maintains a nice moisture level, a cool environment, and plenty of that organic matter they just enjoy. When population levels boom, they look for those little seedlings to munch on at times. 

Most of the time it’s a non-issue. They stay in the mulch, happy and content to turn everything into soil and eat all those bad elements. Once the seedlings get a little height to them, they are no problem at all. I just let them be, and I find it to be a great symbiotic relationship.

So the next time you're looking at your plants and see one (or more) of these little roly-polies, take heart in the fact that they are providing a lot of good—even if there is a little bad in the beginning.

I have to admit, even after all these years, I still enjoy poking them ;)

Happy Gardening 🌱