- Welcome back to "Jacques in the Garden."
Today, we're going to be covering
a much requested topic,
which is how to deal with these guys
by not handpicking them,
but actually on a broad scale solution,
they could cover your whole garden very easily.
It does require some purchases,
but man, grubs are such a big problem
in the garden for a lot of people,
especially in raised beds,
they could be quite problematic
where they start eating your plant roots,
and actually lead to sudden plant death.
So when you have this plant
that's looking really great,
it's got plenty of water, sunshine,
everything else and it suddenly dies,
there's a good chance it's because these guys
are down there eating the roots off your plants.
So if you have them in your compost bin,
totally fine, very good.
Actually, they'll help break down
your compost even faster.
I just heard a June beetle fly by,
and those June beetles are actually
the primary source of these grubs
in my garden at least.
They're also known as fig beetles here
in San Diego 'cuz they love eating figs.
But without further ado,
let's get into exactly how to treat them
on a broad scale
using something special
called beneficial nematodes.
You might be wondering
what exactly an nematode is,
and all I'll say is that,
it is a microscopic soil microorganism.
It lives in the soil and it's a predator
for a lot of different larval,
and pupil stage insects and bugs.
So the nice thing about it is,
it's not just for grubs.
It actually will attack termites.
It'll attack ants.
It'll attack flies.
Anything like that
that is generally considered a pest
in the garden,
especially at this time of year
where we're transitioning
into the winter.
We wanna start controlling some of these things
before they get out of hand.
So what I have here is from Arbico Organics.
I purchased these myself,
but I'll put a link down at the bottom
if you guys wanna find it.
This is the only real source
I know of that's trusted,
which is why I use them.
And this is a triple combo pack.
It has three different types of nematodes.
So every nematode serves a different purpose.
This has a combination that will attack things
like cabbage maggots,
hump back flies, onion maggots.
This one will attack cutworms, fleas,
fly larva, termites.
And the last one here is NemaSeek,
which is one that is targeting grubs
more so than the others.
So I actually just realized
I mixed all these bags up.
It doesn't really matter
because what I'm going to do here
is actually take half of each bag,
and add it to this water.
What I'm going to do is mix it into the water,
and from there,
we'll actually dilute that into here,
and we're gonna use this hose-end sprayer
to spray it across our entire garden,
and get rid of these grubs once and for good,
at least for now.
So we'll talk a little bit
more about that later on,
but first I'm going to do this
in a more kind of intense way
because I'm going to be splitting this
with someone.
So I won't bore you guys with that detail,
but I'm going to be weighing each bag,
splitting it in half,
adding it to my water,
and then mix it up and we'll take it from there.
Now we have our nematodes in the water,
and I'm going to be mixing it very, very well.
I'll probably get something bigger
than this twig here to mix it a little better.
But we want this to be perfectly homogenous
'cuz what we're going to do
is take little portions of it,
add it to our sprayer,
and then spray it throughout the garden.
So as we're doing it,
we wanna make sure we're continuously mixing it
so we're not just getting all the nematodes
in one clump,
but we're getting them
throughout our entire space.
I've got a decent amount of space to cover here,
not just what's behind me here,
but I have the other garden as well.
So I'm gonna finish mixing this up,
and we'll talk about how to use
this guy right here.
So there is something else special,
and that is very important to mention,
which is when to apply these nematodes.
You could see right now,
my whole garden is actually very wet.
I am doing this video today for a reason,
and that's because it rained yesterday.
It's supposed to rain tonight,
and you want all your soil to be fully saturated,
not saturated I guess, but moist enough
that the nematodes can actually survive
when you spread them.
If you just spray them into dry dirt,
they're not gonna do anything,
they'll just die.
And you'll think, "Wow, I just wasted all my money,
and those nematodes were useless."
That was user error.
So the fact that it's gonna rain tonight,
and the fact that it rained the night before,
means that these nematodes
will be very well-situated
to get into the soil and survive,
and thrive and kill all the grubs for me.
So that's a very important caveat to not forget.
Now we have our nematode soup,
and I have my sprayer here,
and I'm ready to apply.
So the way these things work
is that you add whatever you wanna spray
into this bottom reservoir.
Usually you start with water,
and then you add whatever
you're mixing in to that.
The way this thing works
is that as you turn this dial,
it'll actually control
how much diluted spray you're putting out
from this canister.
And the recommendation from Arbico Organics
was that you would do a four ounce dilution.
So what we're going to do now
is this is a very concentrated mix.
I'm going to take two shots of it.
Actually, I'm gonna mix it first
'cuz you wanna make sure
it's perfectly mixed every single time
you take a dose.
Take a shot.
A little scoop nematodes.
We're gonna do two shots every time.
Now, getting this kind of dilution perfectly
can be a challenge and it can be something
that you actually do try to accomplish.
But in this case, I'm just going to make sure
I have a nice strong brew,
and I'm just gonna spread it
across my garden.
So here we go.
I have it set to four ounce dilution.
I'm going to attach my spray, my hose itself.
So here's a quick demonstration of how it works.
If I click on,
(water spraying)
it's going to automatically,
actually, before I do that,
I'll make sure it's really fully, truly mixed.
And then so now when I turn that on,
it's now spraying nematodes everywhere.
So these nematodes should get into the soil,
and now start attacking those grubs.
As I mentioned, some of these things,
they're not well-made,
but they have different spray patterns,
like this one and then this one,
which is a stream.
And then this one is probably the most useful
if you're doing something like a lawn application
or across the garden bed
'cuz you could just come in,
and fan spray your whole entire garden bed.
So now let's go ahead and do that.
But before we go across the whole garden,
let's set up our experiment here.
All right, so we'll see.
That should be enough nematodes.
I'm gonna do one more blast for good measure
to see if it kills these grubs for us.
And then we'll know if this truly works.
The reason I'm starting with this bed here
is that this is where my first
fall transplants went in.
So I want to make sure that these guys
are well-protected and by applying
a nice beneficial nematode dose,
I'll know that at least the grubs
won't kill my plants.
I'm actually also going to spray
some of my pathways
because there's no reason
the grubs aren't gonna live there as well.
And while I'm over here,
I'll also mention,
some people call 'em nematodes or nematodes.
Personally, I'm gonna call 'em nematodes
'cuz to me it sounds better,
but feel free to call 'em nematodes.
As you're spraying every once in a while,
take your whole spray contraption,
and give it a good shake to make sure
that they're still homogenized.
My guess is that if you remove the straw,
it would probably work even better,
but there's too much straw
in my garden for me to actually remove it all.
If you have the option to spray directly
onto bare dirt,
I would probably recommend that over this option.
You could see here that
I'm starting to get pretty low,
and since I'm angling this a lot,
I'm worried that I'm not going
to pick up all the nematodes.
So I'm gonna go ahead and recharge this.
But we did start here and now we're down to here.
So we know that we're at least
spreading the nematodes in the garden.
The stream also works great
for when you want to target directly
at the root of a plant.
That way you know that the nematodes
are right at the root base of your plant
where they're going to do the most work.
If you're a chicken owner,
one of the best use cases
for the beneficial nematodes is actually
spraying the run where your chickens are.
Now you might say, "Okay Jacques.
But if I do this,
that means there won't be any grubs
for them to eat."
Now that might be true,
but honestly my chickens are pretty picky.
They don't seem to like 'em that much.
But what I'm getting here is actually the benefit
of killing off any of these pupil
or larval stage of a fly.
So if you have a lot of chicken poop,
you tend to have some flies.
And I'm hoping that by applying
some nematodes right now,
what they'll do is actually,
help control my fly population,
which to be honest isn't that bad.
But I'll take what I could get
because after a rainstorm like this,
and a bunch of chicken poop,
there's a good chance
I'm going to have way more flies
than I know what to do with.
So hopefully this works,
but it's another great benefit
for these beneficial nematodes.
I should mention really quickly
that with nematodes,
there is no harm to any pets, chickens,
dogs, cats, birds, you name it.
They're pretty much only
going for anything that's in the soil,
things that we want to actually deal with.
So pretty great.
If you have a container garden
or a small space and don't really
have the room to maneuver a hose everywhere,
you could also use a little sprayer
or watering can whatever you want,
but we're pretty much addicted
to these new sprayers here.
This one's called the Venus Super,
they're from Quasar,
and it's actually a really cool product
and I'll show you why.
So I'm gonna scoop up one shot of nematodes
in here 'cuz this is going to be a much more
sort of concentrated solution.
So the way this works,
is it has this hose attachment
with the weight on it.
And what that means is that
when I put this in here,
I could actually spray this
from any direction upside down, sideways.
If you name it, it could spray it.
So let's go ahead and pump this up.
(device pumping)
And I'm going to be using this on a stream
because I want to basically
inject directly into the soil.
So it just made the little poof sound,
which means that it's pressurized.
And here we go.
(device spraying)
So you can see I'm getting a nice strong stream.
And actually, let me mix this up first
because what we want
is all those nematodes to get blasted
through the straw right into the root zone.
And when I say upside down, here's an example.
This actually moves as well,
which is kind of interesting,
but look at that.
So it doesn't really matter what angle
you're at or where you're applying it.
You could turn this however you want,
and you'll get the nematodes
exactly where you need them.
So I'm gonna go ahead and apply this
to the rest of my container garden,
as well as my huge backyard garden over here,
and that's really it for this one.
I hope you guys learned something.
I'll have a link to a video right here,
which talks about how to actually sift grubs
out by hand
if you don't want to go with the nematode route.
(soft instrumental music)
(device spraying)