• Do you need help identifying a 🌶?
    Is your plant suffering from an unknown issue? 🤧
    Then ask in Identification and Diagnosis.

grubs

Repoting a few plants today i found a couple of pots with a number of curl grubs in them, might explain why this plants were looking a little yellow and unhappy. Ok has anyone got experience with getting rid of them? from reading stuff on the net i have come up with the following choices.

1. pull out plant and go through soil picking out grubs and repotting plant. i guess this hinges on you finding all grubs and hopefully not stressing the already stressed plant.

2. commerical lawn grub sprays. wonder how good they work? maybe someone out there has tried them on an infestation.

3. putting pot in a bucket of water for an hour or so and drowning the grubs. sounds simple but would it hurt/kill off the plant too.

I'm going to most likely just throw out the birdseye plants (got loads of seeds to replant) and just try to save the 7 pod as i can't replace her, all my other pots seem ok.


Looking forward to hearing advice from someone that has fought the grubs before. cheers
 
Getting rid of pests is like getting rid of politics, you have to get another party that is willing to eat the other party. ie bugs. Have you tried using ladybirds yet?
 
not sure ladybirds can eat something that big :) i have attract ladybirds to my garden with santolinas to control other things like aphids. i love ladybirds. i believe the black flower wasp uses the curl grubs to raise thier young but i'm not sure how to attract more of them to my chillies. shame cause those wasps are beautiful close up.
 
There are nematodes that you can buy that eat them from the inside out.
I electrocuted mine with a worm zapper in a 15 or 20 gal. container that had tons of grubs in them.

2 welding rods and an extention cord (split into two wires) plugged into the wall.Those suckers can't get to the top of my 15 gal. pots fast enough.
Then it's squishing time. LOL
Over 60 in one pot alone.Then more another day.
 
I only recently discovered how efficient the parasitic wasps are in cases like this. VERY EFFICIENT.
 
You can soak your peppers in a bucket of water for several hours with no harm done as long as the pots drain well afterwords.

The area I live in has an infestation of Argentine Ants, they have formed a mega colony in my neighborhood. If one must have an infestation of an invasive species, Argentine Ants are the way to go; they knock out fire ants and termites. However, since I don't want to pass the infestation on to anyone else by accident, I soak any plant I pot up in soapy water before giving them away, this includes peppers and tomatoes. They do just fine.
 
Back
Top