Hi. I am the president of the Thompson Okanagan Christmas Tree Association and am making a general query about June beetle larva. We are having a problem with the large June beetle grubs which eat the roots of new seedlings and am wondering if there is any practical and economical way to prevent the damage.
Sevin and diazanon are mentioned for June Beetle control, but they have the usual and well documented side effects (residues, overspray, kill the good along with the bad, etc.) Try [june beetle larvae +"biological control"] in google for some alternatives like nematodes, but bear in mind that the *@&$* that brought Starlings to North America probably thought they were harmless too! Ralph
We used to have problems with May/June beetle larvaes. Especially their third instar can cause significant damage to small/medium plants. First, we tried to dug out trees and hand picked larvaes which was extremely time consuming , but efective. After long search I found insecticide called DURSBAN 10g, which proved to be excellent against first and second instar of grubs. Since then, we apply Dursban every fourth year and so far it keeps grubs away. Unfortunatelly, Dursban 10g has been banned in Europe last year for god knows what reason, so you might have problems buying it. I've heard that garlic deters grubs but never tried it. One more thing seems to be working against grubs... They love lettuce. So you can plant some lettuce as traps and after a week dig lettuce up with fairly large chunk of earth around it and kill em. Pavol
