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Sat, Jul 30, 11 at 22:45
| Its egg laying time for the Green Fruit Beetles that decimate nectarine and other soft fruit crops in southern California about this time of the year. I killed six of them in the past two days when they landed on the piles of pine needles and wood chip mulch I was working on. They were easy kills this time because they had only one thing in mind, bury into the mulch and lay their eggs. The ones I squashed oozed out eggs. And they are hard to squash, if they are on a soft surface like the ground or a pile of mulch all you do is stun them if you step on them. You have to grind them with your heal or try to crush them with the sharp edge of a shovel or between some wood chips, just hitting then with the flat side of a shovel doesn't faze them.
So its mixed feelings about putting mulch around my fruit trees, its good for the trees but also attracts pests that will eat the fruit. When digging under compost I had previously put around my trees I came across many big fat grubs which are the larva of these Green Fruit Beetles that hatched from the eggs layed by the adults. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| They eat over-ripe fruit. So harvest promptly. Jean, who gardened for 30-some years in SoCal and whose peaches never had any problems with the green fruit beetle. |
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| Get some chickens. Grub-eating machines. |
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- Posted by lazygardens PhxAZ%3A Sunset 13 (My Page) on Tue, Aug 2, 11 at 12:59
| I have a few of those, but the curve-billed thrashers dig the grubs up and eat them. |
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| They( Green Fruit Beetle) love my coffee waste & they work the soil in my Spring beds. So far they have not hurt my plant roots or eat my vegetables. |
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