I was digging out a small area of my sisters lawn at the weekend. In the 2ft sq patch of turf & thin layer of top soil I found about 20 grubs which I put on the bird table. They had no legs, just a mouth & they were about a 6 on the *icky shudder* scale.
She lives in Royston so underneath the thin layer of top soil was rock hard chalk.
Any ideas what they are & if she needs to get rid of them, how?
Colour? Size?
Could they be leather jackets (crane fly/daddy long leg larvae) ?
These live in lawns and can often be a pest when cultivating an area that was recently grassland.
Can't get away from leather, can we!
Agree it's the most likely. If colour & size are right.
That's them! *shudder shudder* There's something about them that just gives me the willies!
20 of them in a small patch was a bit excessive, don't you think?
They feed on grass roots, so it's an ideal environment for them. They're the larvae of the daddy-long-legs. Is the grass visibly suffering? If not, don't worry about them.
Same applies to the thingy-chafer (or May bug) larvae. They are fatter and uglier than leatherjackets - white with an arange head. Bit like a scaled down Jabba the Hut. Our lottie has loads of larvae where grass grows (which was our entire lottie plot before me and my friend took it over a few years back!).
Wow, I have experienced the Puritans at last. Please believe me when I say I did not call it a thingy-chafer. I wasn't being forgetful. I am just not allowed to say that word, c o c k!
If they are leatherjackets, I'd suggest you kill the buggers as soon as possible!!! We had a serious infestation that destroyed about a third of our lawn almost overnight and are at our wits' end as to what to do now. Apparently bad drainage - as well as recent transition from grazing land - encourages them. Someone told me that spraying with copper would do the trick, but I haven't yet looked into this - doesn't sound likely/desirable to me.
I do have my suspicions that they might have come in with a load of mushroom compost that was piled next to where the worst damage started - I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has spotted a connection.
Bluejane,
Why not let them finish off the lawn and then you can have more space to grow veggies!
Don't know if copper would do anything, but there is a nematode which can be watered on in warm weather (which we must have soon ;D). Either that, or encourage starlings - they eat the horrible creatures.
More than you ever wanted to know about them here:
http://www.greengardener.co.uk/chafer.htm
Good idea, Lizard Man! I'll have a word with the lawn keeper (my other half) - but I'm not hopeful!
And Rosa - thanks for that. I'd heard about the nematodes but I just have the feeling that too many weather conditions have to be exactly right for them to work. Don't want to spend masses of money on something that's doomed to fail. Bitterly cold again this morning ... with any luck the cold weather will kill the leatherjackets off! Incidentally, I was talking to a nurseryman over the weekend and he said he's never known a worse year for them (this is in the West of Ireland). Has it been particularly bad elsewhere?
We had a virtual plague in my part of NE England a few years ago - it seemed to coincide with a vast drop in starling numbers
We don't have starlings in our immediate area - maybe we should introduce some ... I had heard there was a drop in numbers in the UK. Pesticides, agricultural methods etc to blame, I guess?
Another thing that I've noticed is that there used to be vast flocks roosting in Birmingham city centre in winter. They netted all the buildings to get rid of them and the pigeons (I've had long-dead starlings dropping on my head in New Street before now!), and this happened around the time numbvers started falling. I assume every city did the same thing so I wonder if there's a connection.
The starlings are all in Essex, and most of them in my garden!
i'm sure thats what my mum had in her lawn which was then DESTROYED by foxes trying to dig up the larve for food. this happened several years in a row. i cannot remember how they got rid of them though.