Hi Mark,
I live in Brisbane and have an acre block of land, eventually hoping to
build a house on it soon.
In the meantime I made contact with a couple of tree loppers who kindly gave
me loads of unwanted mulch which I dug copioulsy into proposed garden beds
thinking it would enrich the soil.
After about 6 months when I decided to plant, every time I dug a hole, I
found curl grubs in plague proportions, and I mean around 50 or 60 per
square metre. I had initially planted canna lilleys with the mulch which
wern't going too well so I pulled them out and honestly, the roots resembled
a bee-hive of curl-grubs.
So I went to the local produce store and bought some poison to attack them
with, but the trouble was that when I got home and read the
instructions/warnings, I wasn't gamed to use it as I wanted to use the beds
for growing veggies (as well as ormanentals), and the label said not for
home use.
So I kept digging up and turning over the proposed garden bed soil and
squashed every curl grub I came across, hundreds of them.
My research on the internet indicated that curl-grubs are the lave of a
family of beetle called the "Scarab", such as the rhinoricious beetle, and
they love eating decaying vegetable matter, however their delicacy is the
tendertips of roots of certain plants.
Apart from locating them and sending them to the great happy hunting ground
via underfoot while digging, or using what I interpreted as a pretty lethal
poison, I havn't really came across the solution of how to eardicate them.
Apparently the bandicoot considers them a delicacy, as do magpies and
kookaburras, but as I see the evidence of them in action, they are hardly
making an impression in the curl grub numbers.
I would welcome anyone's opinion with crossed fingers as I previously made
an appeal to the group but didn't get a response - so does this fall into
the too-hard basket or where do we turn?
Regards and good luck Mark, hope we learn something,
Jim





"M" wrote in message
.. .
I've always had slaters and worms and various crawlies in my little black
Kmart-type compost bin, and they've all worked together to make me some
nice rich dirt.

However, in the last week, when I turn over a few forkfuls of stuff, I
unearth MANY curl-grubs - like 40 in about three minutes! There are
clusters of the fat little buggers!

This can't be good. In the past there have been one or two turn up at the
bottom of the compost, but now they're all through the middle. A couple is
easy to remove when putting the compost on the garden, but what about the
dozens and dozens I'm finding now?

Any useful thoughts on what I should do???

Regards,
Mark.