Grubs in soil (help please)

[justin1287]

The house I moved into had a problem with grubs last summer. There are piles of dirt that I want to use that have grubs in them. From my research, it appears that these grubs will turn into beetles soon and leave the soil and not cause a lot of immediate probplems. But, they will leave the soil and mate and lay eggs. The people that lived here before....they got grubs from amending the dirt with horse manure. I guess beetles like to lay their eggs in that type of medium. It looks like the main damage from grubs is after the eggs are laid because they need to eat lots of roots to grow. I was wondering if there is a way to prevent the beetles laying their eggs on soil that smells of horse manure? Thanks!

[GardeningCook]

For starters - the grubs in the lawn didn't appear because there's horse manure in the amended soil. The grubs were/are simply attracted to optimum conditions - like lawns everywhere with good soil.

There are MANY methods out there for controlling grubs - both chemical & organic. It all boils down to how much of a "Lawn Nazi" you want to be. For an organic solution, you may want to look into applying nematodes.

We have lawn grubs here (Brown & Green June Beetles mostly), but frankly really don't care all that much. They don't do a lot of damage, & the lawn really isn't all that important to us. The birds & skunks have a field day with them, & since we don't discourage their foraging, maybe that's why we don't have a big grub problem.

[rainbowgardener]

You can also buy Milky Spore disease as a powder sold in garden stores. It is a disease that only affects grubs in the soil, Japanese beetles and related ones. It is harmless to everything else. It only works on them when the soil is warm, so best time to apply it is late summer or early fall, when there are lots of grubs in the soil and the soil is warm. It works well in conjunction with the beneficial nematodes G.Cook mentioned.

It will take care of the grubs in your soil. That doesn't mean that you won't have Japanese beetles the next year, since they are good flyers. But if you apply the Milky Spore in fall and then again in spring (just to be sure it is well established), you shouldn't have to do it again, since the disease naturally multiplies through the soil.

[GardeningCook]

Ahhhh yes - Milky Spore. That's what I was trying to think of as well.