- Joined
- May 17, 2019
- Messages
- 65
- Climate
- Sub-Tropical
Yes, its unfortunate that those hungry beetles grow into those huge beautiful rhino beetles and other similar Christmas beetles etc.
But I find they tend to live harmoniously with my plants.
But then again the plants I have growing in the ground never look that crash hot anyway due to impoverished soil.
I often find them at the bottom of my compost which is fine because that's a place where they are doing good work.
The thing we need to be mindful of re these beetles is that their life cycle extends over several years and do we want to kill off that cycle purely because they are eating some plant roots?
It's like the giant cicada whose life cycle is 17years long. They live in the soil among the roots of their tree, then slowly eat their way up the inside of the native tree trunk and finally emerge through a hole they cut in the fork of a smaller branch.
However, once they get right up there, often the black cockatoos hear them and come in to cut the branch off to get the grub, which is not good for the grub!
But we often see the branch dying on this tree in our gardens and someone will say oh, use insecticide, its a grub. But the poor thing has spent 16 of those 17yrs getting there.
I have found these in my area ... and have just left them alone and or tossed them back into the garden to live away... i plan on growing enough so that they don't matter. and companion planting. I will have to draw up a map of my place for some advice on planting some citrus trees... herm