Alright, this is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com.
Today, we have another exciting episode for you.
And in this episode, we’re gonna answer a viewer’s question.
So I got actually a message from my good friend, Paul, over Facebook, that said “John, man,
help my buddy out, dude.
He has a question for you.”
So because it’s my friend that asked me this favor, I thought I’d answer the question
in a video for you guys to share this with you guys, because I know many of you guys
may have had this challenge yourself.
So in any case, without further ado, let’s go into this video and see the viewer’s
question.
Hey, welcome to An American Homestead.
This video is for John Kohler at GrowingYourGreens.com.
He often times takes questions in video responses, and so I’m submitting this question to him
on his channel.
John, we have a great garden here.
It’s our first year garden, we incorporated a lot of the techniques and things that you
have promoted on your channel into this garden.
Things like rock dust, worm castings, and some of the Boogie Brew products.
Our garden has taken off.
We are very excited about the growth we’re seeing in our garden, and we attribute a lot
of that success to you.
We do have one problem though…
Let me go show you what I got.
Okay, so here’s what I got, take a look at this.
When you move the dirt around, after you’ve been digging in it, there are just grubs everywhere.
You see that one there.
Move some more dirt around, here’s another one there.
They’re just everywhere in my garden and I just don’t know what to do about all of
these grubs.
Here’s another one.
All of these grubs are just everywhere, all over the ground.
And so…I mean, in fact, I lost a few cabbage plants early in the season.
I noticed I put my cabbage starts inside the ground, and they just got chewed down right
at the base.
I even caught a grub once chewing on my cabbage plants early in the morning.
And so there’s my issue…
Grubs.
What do I do about those?
So basically, we have grubs.
What natural defense do we use against these?
I don’t want to use chemicals and I know if I go to the store that there’s vast array
of chemicals that I can purchase to use on my garden, but I don’t want to do that.
So what would you recommend?
Alright, Zachary—wow, man, that bell pepper.
That thing looks huge!
Glad you’re using the rock dust, the worm casting, compost teas, and other things that
I recommend.
The stuff that I recommend, you guys saw it in Zachary’s video.
It does work and I’m sure countless of you guys out there that have been using some of
the similar techniques are having the best gardening season yet.
And if you’re not, that’s alright.
Life and your garden is a continual learning experience.
You’re learning as you grow and I always end my episodes with “Keep on growing.”
But in any case, I know, Zachary, you have some challenges and let’s go ahead and dive
right in.
so besides just saying “Oh, do this,” I really want to teach you guys the concepts
that my head goes through when I see a problem in my garden.
I think WWND—What Would Nature Do?
What would nature do if there’s an overpopulation of these grub things in your yard?
Maybe nature would send some animals or something to eat all those grubs that love to eat grubs.
I mean, I think ducks would probably love to eat grubs or chickens would love to eat
the grubs but I don’t know that they’d actually know where to peck them out and find
them.
So nature would have some natural checks and balances like the governments supposed to
have some checks and balances, but I don’t think the government’s got their checks
and balances worked out properly.
But I’m glad that in most cases, nature does unless man’s starting to get involved.
We’re getting involved in so many things and we’re imbalancing nature in my opinion,
so always try to think What Would Nature Do.
So, I’ll tell you, I actually had a grub problem in my garden, and the solution I had
at that time was I was digging up my raised bed from last year’s tomato plants, I found
some grubs, I’m like “Oh, crap, there’s grubs!” and I don’t want to play my new
collard greens and kale and brassica family plants in there with all these grubs in there.
And I’m like “Okay…”
You guys always know I do, number one, manual control.
Some of you guys might be laughing.
But literally what I did was I took the grubs, I basically took out each scoopful of soil,
put it through a sifter, sifted it out, found the grubs.
I basically hand removed them.
And yes, this took some hours to do and this was on one of my trips—before I left on
one of my trips, I took out all the soil in one of my raised beds and then got all the
grubs out and put it back in so now it was grub free.
But what could happen the next year is more grubs could lay their eggs or whatever and
then I could have more in there, so this was a temporary solution.
So I don’t necessarily recommend you guys do this to your soil—I mean, in a raised
bed or small container, you could do this, but in a big garden, you’re not gonna be
able to do this.
So what I want you guys to do is do what nature would do.
So in nature, there are predators to the grubs, things that eat the grubs.
Like if aliens came down, they might start shooting us with their laser guns.
Hopefully not…
Hopefully they’re nice aliens.
But there’s things, actually, that you can put in the soil that’ll kick ass and beat
up the grubs and make them disappear or minimally greatly control their populations.
So the two things you might want to look into, number one, is called Milky Spore.
Milky spore, there’s a company, I think Gabriel Organics, that basically makes a milky
spore—it’s basically a bacteria that you would put in the soil that basically attacks
the grubs, kicks their ass, and then they’re gone.
And so the milky spore is good only for certain kind of grubs, like the Japanese grubs, and
if you don’t have the Japanese grubs…
They don’t like the other….white people grubs, or the Mexican grubs…
That was a joke.
But, yeah, they only go for the Japanese grub.
So better way, if you don’t know what kind of grubs you have, to do it is to use these
other things called beneficial nematodes.
So to think basically—what is a nematode?
A nematode is basically a little small worm that are supposedly microscopic.
So you might think they’re a scam, like I did, when I originally bought some beneficial
nematodes and I got this pack, opened it up—I didn’t see nothing!
It’s just said “Mix this packet in water” then it’s gonna work, or some crap.
And I’m like “Okay….”
And the stuff actually worked!
But you really gotta be sure that you get your beneficial nematodes from a good, reputable
reseller, because the nematodes, they do need to be refrigerated or else they can lose their
lives.
So if you go to a place that’s not sending them in a refrigerated packet with like little
chill packs or something, you might want to be wary.
So deal with a reputable supplier, which I don’t have any recommendations for you guys
at this time.
Hopefully I’ll be able to find one for you guys.
But yeah, you want to find a reputable supplier of nematodes, and specifically nematodes that
are good for grubs.
Because there are all different kinds of nematodes that work in your soil and if you get the
wrong type of nematode, it may not work and if you get the nematodes that maybe got too
hot because you shipped them in the middle of summer and they’re not being cooled down,
then they might go inactive and then they might not work either.
And then you’ll say “Oh, that John’s full of shit!”
Well, no, if you get the proper nematodes, they will take care of the challenge.
And you might have to experiment.
You might have to do more than one round of the nematodes, and if you do, I would encourage
you to get them from different suppliers because one supplier’s stuff may be good and the
other supplier’s stuff may be bad and I have no way to check this.
So, yeah, what would nature do?
Nature would have controls to control nature.
If things get out of balance, then the predators come.
Like if there’s too many rats, then the cat population will increase because there’s
more rats for the cats to eat, they’ll be healthier because they’ll be eating more
and guess what they’ll reproduce more.
Have more cats, eat all the rats.
And that’s basically my premise of my whole philosophy on how I garden.
What would nature do?
I try to think about.
Not what would John do—maybe you could think what John do would because John would do what
nature would do…
WWJD—What Would John Do.
What Would Nature Do?
So that you can think about “Oh, no, this plant’s getting eaten by bugs!” or whatever.
What would nature do?
Well, then nature would have a predatory bug.
So if you’re getting aphids, you could set free some ladybugs that would eat the bugs
or you could use some praying mantises.
There’s all different kinds on natural biologic controls when these problems crop up.
And I want to encourage you guys to think, really think, What Would Nature Do?
Hopefully this answered your question, Zachary, you could have a bountiful garden and grow
even more food for you and your family so you guys could get healthier and, once again,
get out of the industrial agriculture system as much as you can.
Hopefully you’re also gonna spread this news, spread your passion—because I can
see you’re quite passionate about gardening—with others as I do because it’s really this
is what we need.
All you gardeners out there, to make a difference in the world is for one person just to tell
another person and get somebody else fired up about gardening like I’ve done so that
we can change this world, and we have a whole world and country of gardeners taking responsibility
for themselves, growing food, getting them one step out of that standard system that
we’re involved with and we can make this world a better place one person at a time.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com.
We’ll see you next time, and remember, keep on growing.