A Day In The Life Of A Mad Scientist

So, I’ve been noticing these grubs crawling on the walking trail the last several weeks. I believe these are Green June bug grubs, as they crawl upside down, I kid you not! There’s not a whole lot but enough that it’s peaked my interest, also it’s something I’ve never seen before.

These dudes live in the dirt, so not sure why they’re coming up and out and crawling on the hot pavement, it’s odd to me -

I’m also seeing oodles of these, what look like sifted dirt mounds in the grass along side the walking trail. Turns out these are fire ant 🐜 mounds, yikes 😬 and ouch 🤕 if you get into them -

Using a stick, I poked some holes in and around a couple of these mounds and boy-o-boy they came alive!

I also performed a teeny, what some might view as a, sadistic experiment today 😬

Click the YouTube link below to see what happens when you disturb a fire ant nest and then introduce a grub into the  melee -

Fire Ant and Grub Experiment 

It’s a tad violent!

And a bit of a waste of a tasty morsel, yum 😋! Think I’ll see if I can find a couple, then head on over to the Nolichucky for bit of fishing, upon my return from Chicago. I’m guessing they would make terrific bait!

Grubby Grub Grubs...

Hilling my potatoes the other afternoon I came across oodles and oodles of grubs!  This is just a small sampling, as there were well over 20.  These darn things do a number on the lawn, killing areas in short order, so whenever I get the opportunity I get rid of them.  Often time squeezing this heads and tossing them back into the garden, however, our chickens absolutely love love them!  I can't get them out of the cup I have them in before they're gobbled up.

A Tilling I Did Go!

I tended to our gardens this past weekend, among a dozen other things.

Got a jump after work on Friday and began turning the winter rye and compost into the garden. 

 Found these grubs in the first five rows I turned.

By late Saturday afternoon our large garden was complete - all turned!

This go around produced this mess of grubs - well over 50!  The majority of these dude we about the size of a quarter, monsters.  Imagine what these suckers would do to tomato plants...

Not too worry, the girls LOVED them!  Gobbled them up as if they hadn't eaten in weeks.

I plant winter rye in my vegetable gardens every fall and have been doing so for as long as I can remember.  However, this is the first year that the deer have been taking a fancy to it.  Now, I don't know if it's because of all the snow we had and the bitter cold temps but they've been coming right up to the house garden and chowing on the deep green grass.  I don't mind them eating the grass, rather it's the comfort level they now have and the worry I have of them eating our veggie plants once I get them in the ground.

Creepy Crawly Damage-Causing Insects

Here is a sampling of the damage causing insects I came across while working on our flower beds this past weekend.

I have to tell you that I am shocked at just how many of the white grubs I uncovered; too many!  I collect about 30 of them, which I fed to the chickens who devoured them in short order.  I squashed about another 30 too, as it was just easier versus stopping constantly to collect them.  After all my hands were already covered and stained in dirt, whats some additional insect innards too?!

What this tells me is that on top of the (6) 40lb bags of lime and the 15,000 square foot bag of Scott's Step 1 fertilizer I put down on our entire lawn I now need to purchase a couple bags of grub control and spread it too before these dudes do too much damage to our lawn.

The shockingly large (3 1/2") white grub is, from what I can determine, a member of the Cerambycidae family, which are long-horned beetles, round-headed wood borers.  The small white grubs are June and Japanese beetles.  And the darker worms are "cutworms", which are moth larvae that sleep in the soil or leaf litter during the day, and wake at night to nibble the tender stems of young plants, cutting them to the ground.

Milky Spore Grub Control

I'm gonna try applying Milky Spores to my lawn this spring in an attempt to control the grubs. There are numerous areas throughout the lawn that have been damaged by grubs. This past fall there was a grub boom that hit many lawns in the area, including ours. Milky Spores is organic and a safe way to control grubs and will continue to grow and multiply for years to come. No more need to buy and apply pesticides, so everyone wins...except the nasty grub!

Milky Spore is a naturally occurring host specific bacterium (Bacillus popillae-Dutky). This product is lethal to a familiar destructive summer-time pest. It targets and discriminately works to attack the white grubs of Japanese Beetles.

Milky Spores are swallowed by grubs during their normal pattern of feeding; this starts the demise of healthy grubs. Milky Spore disease then begins to cripple the grub, and within the next 7-21 days will eventually die. As the grub decomposes, it releases billions of new spores.

Milky Spore is not harmful to beneficial insects, birds, bees, pets or man. The product is approved and registered with EPA, Milky Spore will not affect wells, ponds or streams.

Milky Spore Grub Control F.A.Q.