How To Control Garden Grubs
Grubs are one of the most common pests that will take up residence in your garden, and can cause a massive amount of damage to the roots of your grass and flowers. If left unchecked, a grub population can quickly leave patches of your lawn wilting and browning. Thankfully, there are a few things that you can do to remove grub populations and prevent them from returning.
Identifying Grub Infestations
The first thing that you should do is figure out if you actually have a grub problem in your yard, or if another pest or even an environmental factor is to blame for your dying plants. To determine if you have grubs in your soil, you should take a hand trowel to the dead or dying patches of your lawn and scrape away the top level of dirt, exposing the roots of your grass or plants. Grubs will live in the area around the roots, and have a curled shape and a bright white color, with several small legs and a yellow or brown head. If you notice several grubs in the soil, you can move on to treatment, but if you find other pests, you'll have to identify them before you move on to eliminating them.
Eliminating Grubs
If you do find grubs in your soil, you can use a number of natural products to quickly cut down on their population and get your garden back to looking healthy and lush. Milky spore is natural bacteria that is available at most garden supply and hardware stores that you can add into your soil. It acts as a pesticide without posing a danger to other insects or plants in your garden, and will continue to reproduce for years, helping to prevent future grub growth. In addition, you can purchase nematodes at the same locations, which are small worms that act as a parasite and will slowly infect and kill the entire grub population, for short term treatment.
Preventing Future Infestations
To prevent grubs from taking up residence in your garden and yard in the future, there are a number of steps that you can take. Firstly, you should limit the amount of water that your yard receives to the bare minimum, as heavy watering creates ideal conditions for grubs to begin hatching. Alternatively, you can purchase preventative pesticides from most hardware stores, but keep in mind that these chemicals will often kill other insects (including beneficial ones) as well.
