Many apple verieties grown on California's north coast are marginal here and often die after a few seasons despite good care. Your success with other fruit trees indicates you provide proper care. Perhaps they just need time to settle in and a year in which we have a more traditional weather pattern. But snails and earwigs destroy my garden plants, sometimes in one night. A. UC master gardener Carol Bowden says she doesn't know of a poison for snails and earwigs that would not also harm wildlife, but there are ways to trap or bar these pests.
Earwigs have a beneficial role in the garden as predator of aphids.
Keeping the area picked up reduces the hiding places. Add a little vegetable oil and place several around the garden, emptying the cans often. Snails can be kept out of vegetable gardens with barriers of copper flashing or copper screens. Dry ashes or diatomaceous earth heaped in a band 1 inch high and 3 inches wide is effective, but it must be replaced after it gets wet. The Garden Detective column is compiled with the help of master gardeners at the UC Cooperative Extension Service in Sacramento County.