Hey Ralph and Meg.....I found a thing in my vegetable garden soil that looks like a grub except it is yellow...all references I can find online says grubs are white...any clue what this is and if I need to get rid of it? I havent planted yet...its been raining for a month....I had a chance today to dig up and add soil, thats when I found this yellowy orangy grub thing.

Grubs bettle larvae. Most are called white grubs, yellow grubs being fish parasites.

The older the grub is and the closer to the pupae stage the darker it will get. The pupae are brown, but yellow is one shade in between.

Sometimes younger smaller grubs are a bit darker than white collecting stain from peaty soil particularly in wet conditions.......they also make a fantastic trout bait!

good, come get them...they're all yours....

 

I did find a white one...the yellow one I found was actually more brown/rust colored when I went back to look at it...not curled up and was a little "pointy" at the back end.

 

Can I put my plants in the ground before I get rid of them? This is only my 2nd year with a garden. I'm pretty ignorant...I'm practicing for tennessee

Probably better taking them out if you can, some of them eat plant roots.

Thanks for info....I guess I have new project...

The local garden shop...a real garden shop, not the lumber centers with the garden dept....told me I probably wouldn't have an issue with the grubs eating my plants...said they prefer the shallow roots of grass. He thought I'd have other issues before I have grub issues. If I do end up with a problem, he suggested I get the natural predetors and release them into the garden.

 

So, all my plants are in the ground. I spent the entire day gardening yesterday.....including my flower garden. My legs are so tight and sore you'd think I just worked out with the NY City Ballet Company...

Do you guys that garden wait for signs of pests or do you do preventive maintenance? This is only my second year with a vegetable garden so I'm pretty ignorant here. Last year I didnt seem to have any issues...everything grew fine and looked good...no spots or holes or fungus etc. I did rotated the plants this year so I didnt plant anything in the same spot as last year...as suggested in a garden book.

I leave it be, other than spraying a soap solution on the new growth of my roses once a fortnight to control greenfly and other aphids. I leave them be on the other plants, the damage on the roses is more obvious.

If you leave the pests the predators will come of their own accord, ladybirds, birds spiders etc.

I don't grow vegetables, if I did it would be more of a problem, but I like having a wide variety of wildlife in my garden. We have a dozen or so young frogs and a toad just now who are doing some damage to our slug population!

Likewise spike, our nocturnal predator, a hedgehog who eats slugs and worms.

We attract small birds like bluetits and dunnocks (hedgesparrows) who in turn attract an occasional visit from a relatively rare sparrowhawk.

If you damage the bottomhalf of the food chain, you won't attract the top end, so I do nothing about the caterpillars that the bluetits eat.

If I were having to eat veggies that I'd grown myself, I'd be a bit more active in protecting them.

It's long story but we usually let nature take whats hers and plant extra, but this year was a wee bit different, a mother rabbit had baby's in our 3 year old strawberry plants and the baby's are all grown up now hee heee hee and we have bought new strawberry plants.

 

Meg doesn't spray much if at all liking things done in a natural way using plants or plant derived stuff to take care of plant pests.

AS for lager pests the goats have been separated and the ones who were jumping the fence and causing all the problems are kept in a stricter confinement.

They seem to like grape vines and ours took a hard enough hit with the weather this spring that we have barely 3 leaves per plant. Makes for better root systems and hardier plants but no grapes this year.

Slugs do the most damage particularly to soft vegetables.

One good way of protecting your veggies against slugs is to have a beer trap.

This works though some might see it as a waste.

Take an old jar or plastic pot, bury it do that the neck is level with the top of the soil. Half fill it with beer and the slugs go for their version of a pint, fall in and drown in the beer.