So I picked these out of my vegetable garden the other day in a 40 cubic ft area. Same issue last year. I have applied milky spores a few times, starting last year. Applied again during summer months and anytime adding soil. I thought it worked, but maybe I just picked out all the grubs last year, and didn’t put enough for this years spawn. I added some beneficial nematodes last week. Any other options of controlling this? Any suggestions going forward to deter June Beatles from the garden?
by SnarfRepublicCA
31 Comments
get a chicken
Get some chickens!. Lol. Jk i have some and i have the same problem so they hang around me while digging or working on landscape in my yard. I have mole problems because the grubs this year are ridiculous. GrubX is all i know what works but not good for pets. Its not safe.
It’s gonna take all the things on repeat – till/manual removal, beneficial nematodes and milky spore. My dogs kill chickens otherwise I’d have those too. I just give my collected grubs to my dad’s chickens and watch them go nuts. Will trade grubs for eggs!
Nematodes need some time to do their magic. Test on a few crops and leave some as is. After two weeks sample a kg of soil from the sprayed area and a kg from the regular one. You will notice a real difference regarding grubs density.
Is it a raised bed? Might have to stretch a sheet over it, one of those mesh things and just poke holes for the plants. Big pain in the ass tho
Get chickens..?
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Just wait for the skunks to show up – they dig in containers too though.
Milky spore
There is BT-G that can help. gotta start in april. in the winter they go deep so its hard to get them.
Get an armadillo
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Have you considered taking up fishing?
Armadillos are kind of cute, but they tend to become obsessive when the find a rich source of grubs. They will decimate your entire garden to ensure there’s no grub left behind lol.
Purchase beneficial nematodes on Amazon.
We have a mole that makes the rounds, he also destroyed the roots on our bushes. So there’s that.
Are grubs even that harmful to vegetables? Of all the things I’ve dealt with, grubs have never been high on my list of concerns.
A product that contains milky spore if you’re looking to go organic. It’s a bacteria that you can introduce to your soil that will kill them
Chickens or maybe even better ducks. I have chickens they are great but also tear things up.
Kill them and stop the cycle. They grow into what we called June Bugs.
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Nematodes
Beneficial nematodes
I guess feeding them to the Crows is the best idea to get rid of them.
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I absolutely adore grubs. they’re so cute and perfect and I love them so much they can eat all my veggies and I’d still love them. If only you could send me yours!
Ugh I had a bunch of June beetle grubs this year- I put my chickens in the raised bed and they were gone in a day. Could you reach out on Nextdoor or another platform to borrow a chicken?
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I have some opossums that do a great job for me…make a damn mess but they take care of grubs pretty well. They migrate or at least only visit a couple times a year but they’ve picked my soil pretty damn clean, I let them do their thing for 4 weeks as I started ripping everything out for the cool season planting. Now they appear to have left and I’ve been amending and planting again and noticed a huge reduction in grubs and they tilled the top 3” of soil for me. I used to hate them but I’ve learned they rarely damage plants, I’ve never seen them harm a mature healthy plant, and as long as I don’t add a handful of an organic fish based fertilizers they never seem to dig up transplants either.