My wife got upset with the image of grubs I posted on facebook the other day, under which I noted how they had invaded our yard. She said it was like letting everyone know you have head lice or something. I suppose it is a little too close to home, but the image drew a lot of reactions, ranging from how others had the same problem, to ways of cooking grubs and whether you can use them for fishing.
For me it was kind of a watershed event, as I finally figured out what happened to the decorative almond tree we gave up on a few years ago and replaced with a magnolia tree. One side had died and there seemed no way to get it to grow back leaves. Turns out these little grubs love grass, plant and tree roots, and had eaten away at one side of the almond tree. Hoping to keep the magnolia tree clean, I dug them all up around the tree roots.
It also explained the brown patches in the grass. My wife was convinced it was the result of the dog peeing on the lawn. I said if that was the case the whole yard would be brown, as our little Corgi was rather indiscriminate when it came to where she peed and pooped. I'm not sure how to get rid of these grubs without ripping up the whole yard, but there are various pesticides available, as well as natural means to bring them under control.
We would have remained in the dark had we not chosen to do a major lawn maintenance effort for the first time in years. I usually battle the dandelions each spring and keep the lawn cut during summer. I get a lot of guff for this from my facebook friends, who tell me the dandelions are good for the bees in Spring, but there's plenty of dandelions throughout the neighborhood. My wife adds a few flowers each year. We occasionally try our hand at tomatoes and strawberries. However, we were hosting a lawn party and wanted to make it look as fresh and clean as possible. We did a major weeding, aerated the lawn, sprinkled overseed and fertilizer, and pruned the trees and bushes, carting off about 20 large lawn bags to the mulch recycling center on the outskirts of the city.
I had set up a projector and sheet screen to show Jaws. We had to wait until 11 to show the movie, given or high northern latitude, which was about the time these strange looking insects came out. The dog was chasing after them in the yard, at which point our neighbor said they were Chafer beetles and that we had to do something about them before they laid their eggs in the yard.
One recommendation was to burn candles in a pan of automotive lubricant with the idea being they would be attracted by the light and stick in the goo. Seems we caught the tail end of the Chafer beetle orgy as none ended up in the pan the next morning.
We weren't sure where these Chafer beetles came from as it was the first time we had encountered so many. Our first inclination was to blame the neighbors as they were redoing their yard, bringing in new peat, plants and mulch. However, if we had symptoms of grubs already then they had been lurking in a larval stage in our yard for years. Turns out Chafer grubs can live 4 to 5 years underground before metamorphosizing into beetles, so no telling where they originally came from.
After a long, dry summer, the rains finally came and the temperature dropped, so we figured whatever lurked underground went into hibernation and we would deal with them next Spring. It was only when I was expanding the earth apron around the magnolia tree to add some plants my wife bought at the market that I uncovered these grubs, lying in a fetal state if you will, waiting for that propitious moment to come to life and lay waste to the beautiful magnolia and anything else they could munch on. It has taken us five years to get this magnolia to produce fuscia blossoms and we aren't about to let these grubs take out another decorative tree.
The grass doesn't really matter at this point as it is so overtaken by clover and other weeds that if we really wanted to restore it, we would have to dig it up, sift the dirt and reseed the lawn as our other neighbors did their lawn two summers ago, only for the weeds to come back. Not something we really look forward to. We just want to protect the plants and trees.
It's a losing battle. I remember reading Durian Gray's and Medlar Lucan's The Decadent Gardener years ago, in which they noted plants begin dying the day they are born. True for all of us. But, flowering plants and trees maintain the illusion of eternal youth by blooming each year, sometimes twice, as was the case with the magnolia this year.
The thing is that once you get started you don't want to see it all go to rot, especially over some lousy white grubs which I have no intention of eating. I'm a reluctant gardener, to be sure, but once I set my mind to something I will carry through to the bitter end. So, I now find myself researching grubs, chafer grubs in particular, looking for a way to be rid of them, preferably without poisoning the dog in the process.
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