Cutworms or scarab

Jason890

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What ya reckon
Cutworms or scarab
Cheers Jason
 

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Jason890

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Unfamiliar, I'm afraid.
Whatever they are the chickens liked them
I have been going through the beds one by one turning them over I have still been losing a few seedlings
Bugs drive me crazy but at least I’m slowly learning the good ones from the bad ones
I don’t know how organic farmers do it
 

Mandy Onderwater

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After years of trial and error they probably recognise bugs and know what natural remedies they can use.
Personally I don't garden completely naturally, but I do try to watch what I use and when.
 

Jason890

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After years of trial and error they probably recognise bugs and know what natural remedies they can use.
Personally I don't garden completely naturally, but I do try to watch what I use and when.
Yes I pretty much do the same
I try to not use sprays but it does get hard
I’m trying to learn all the good bugs from the bad ones
I do regularly check plants
Try to follow all the tips I see on marks channel and a couple of others
I even put bird bathes in the garden to attract birds
And have seen kookaburras regularly snatching things from the beds but I think they might have been getting the big earthworms 😳
 

Mandy Onderwater

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Yeah fair enough!

Only the worms in the topsoil would be at risk, I doubt the kookaburra will grab a shovel ;)

Personally I use Neem Oil for a lot of spraying, but I will usually stop when my plants start to flower. If I really have to I'll spray and do my very best to avoid the flowers. My biggest enemies are grasshoppers and they chew through everything like no tomorrow.
 
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Hi Jason896
They look like what we call curl worms or lawn beetles - the larvae of a smaller black scarab type beetle. If that is what they are they feed on the roots of plants and can ruin veg crops. I have tried to get rid of some, reasonably successfully, by pouring some water with dishwashing detergent around the plants and waiting for them to come up for air - then collect and kill. Chickens do love them but I feed them to the Magpies as I have no chooks. :)
You have to be aware that the solution affects worms too so I follow it up with fresh water and moving any worms that surface to a not treated part of the garden. But mostly I just remove them when I see them in the soil.
H
 

Jason890

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Thanks for your reply
I was thinking scarab as I also seen lots of these small black beetles running around when I turn the soil over
I seem to be having drama with seedlings I believe something was eating the roots
I did buy some lawn grub granular type pellets and pour around garden beds and water in
I regularly dig and turn over beds and hand pick the little suckers out geez I hope I’m getting on top of them because it’s painful seeing seedlings disappear
 

JP 1983

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Aye they're scarab grubs. Cutworms look more like caterpillars with three pairs of brown legs at the front and six pairs of soft padded feet along the body, and metamorph into moths at the end of their life cycle.

As I said in a post elsewhere, I had an entire pot on my balcony filled with these blighters. They made an awesome soil, though.
 
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