Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of men American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain.

And joining me on the set today is our pal, Phil Nixon.

He's here to talk about all things creepy crawly with us today.

Before we get started, Phil, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.

I'm Phil Nixon, I'm retired extension apologist with the University of Illinois.

And so, as Denisa said, if it creeps or crawls, I'm your guy.

That's true.

And today we were talking yesterday he said, I think I'm going to talk about slugs and grubs and I thought Please don't bring live ones in So thankfully, today this time you did it because sometimes you do Yeah, so I got lucky this time I was gonna go look for it just didn't just didn't quite feel like doing it yesterday.

And you know what, no complaints for me.

So we're dry lab and it is okay in science, I like it.

So nature is awake and things are happening.

And so we are starting to see those slugs and grubs and insects out there.

So tell us a little bit about where we are right now and some things that we'll be seeing outside in our gardens.

Okay, well a lot of times this time of year you'll get gardeners will commonly be well they're digging in the ground, there are going to be planted garden and things of this nature, they may be transplanting some trees doing things of that nature.

And generally it's not uncommon for them to come across creepy crawlies in the soil.

And one of the more common ones that you're going to find are going to be grubs.

And, and typically these are this is that it's not going to be this big to be gone going to be about an inch long, and they're white, and usually see shape like this when you see them.

And they have a brown head and six brown legs or light light tan legs, depending on the type.

And generally when when you're when you're gardening, they're, they're going to be in a situation where they're they're just feeding on dead organic matter we have a variety of different types of grubs that occur and, and the ones that get the most play our, our the larval stage, the immature stage of Japanese Beto and mass chafer, which are serious lawn paths will feed on the roots of grass and cause damage.

And they're just kind of coming up right now.

And, and they their eggs are laid typically in in the latter part of June or early part of July, usually the first half of July, throughout most of the Midwest, and they're going to be hatching out in by the early part of August, okay, and they feed on that on that turf.

Then commonly when we've got kind of a dry spell and grass isn't growing all that fast, and they'll eat the roots away and you'll get you'll get brown areas of turf that you can just pull back because the roots are eaten off and and it can cause large areas to die and there's a lot of insecticide sprays are used for to control valves and things of this nature.

But what they do that in the fall is they go down for the winter.

They come back up in the spring they go down to render a Japanese beetle grubs go down when it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit the mass chafers when it's 50 they both come up when it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the root zone in your How do you do know what's what's the temperature in the root zone?

Why you look on the newspaper.

Oh, typically and well in our local news because at the back page of the first section every day, half top half is all on weather.

Okay?

And right there's soil temperature four inch and six inch step or hotdog.

And yesterday's paper said that it was 34 degrees beforehand step and 56 degrees to 68 inch step and a cover 50 degrees.

Okay, they're out there up and they're feeding.

But what happened is, is they went down for the winter and some of them died during the winter and didn't wait right you know, didn't make it.

That fungus diseases got eaten by by other animals, things of this nature.

And so the bottom line is what comes up in the spring is fewer than what was out in the fall.

Sure.

And kind of a rule of thumb on turf feeding.

Grubs is it wasn't enough grubs to kill off your grass in the fall.

It ain't gonna be enough to do it in the spring when the temperatures are cooler, and there's more rainfall in spring.

Generally, we had a very dry April in the Midwest, but But generally, and so the grass is growing better and doing better.

And so if it weren't enough grubs to kill the grass In August and September was drying hot, you're sure you're gonna be enough in the spring to do it.

Now what other?

What you what?

What other clues are there?

If you if you suspect grubs are eating your your lawn?

Did they move in a circular pattern?

Can you find them kind of like how moles move?

What do you do to find out what's the well we don't move very much at all.

In fact, what you do is you'll get, you'll get areas they call a welding grass, or there'll be a few kind of brownish patch of grass up there.

And, in fact, I was given doing some trainers and professionals in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and one of them actually asked me at the end, he says, says how far to grubs move.

And I did this.

That's it.

That's it.

That's it.

Now they do all of this in between, but from here to there, three to five feet is usually about it.

Now is that does that make them easier to treat?

Well, yeah, they're gonna be where, where they were a mom laid the eggs.

And they're gonna be where they fit on the grass.

Now, when the adults come out, they can find my own and a half at a time.

But that's a different ballgame.

So you can't, you can't assume are all going to stay in the same place year to year Gotcha.

within the same year, they're not really going to move and so like I said, if you didn't happen to fall, you didn't know him in the spring.

Now what gardeners commonly do is they're gonna find a third type of white grub and and that's the three year white grub or the true white grub economy.

Okay.

And, and we'll get we'll get a little technical here, you can actually tell the difference between white grubs species by the pattern of, of thick hairs or light spines on the underneath side of your last abdominal segment.

Interesting.

Only you would know that well.

Not only you.

Definitely yeah.

And so what I tell people is your identify which species you've got, you kind of get to get friendly with to but here's how I grew up.

Hey, science, right.

And when you're doing that usually grab does what grubs commonly do when you mess around with him anyway.

Just be prepared.

If you pick up a toad or turtle Yeah.

Okay, so at any rate, what tipple gardeners going to find is going to be in their most garden, or whether they've been growing growing vegetable plants and so on, is going to be true white grubs which can feed on the roots of lots of different things.

But they don't feed on the roots of very much things.

They can be a turf pest to, they can feed on the roots of almost anything.

But if you see only an occasional grub, they're probably feeding primarily on a dead organic matter which they can also do.

And so if we're I've known as people that have had large numbers of white grubs in their garden, they were big time altars.

And they were putting lots of dead organic matter in the soil and the grubs were coming.

And when you get that many grubs, when you also get some plant damage.

And so, just like most things in life, you can go too far.

And you know, sometimes when you go too far with mulch, it gets lost so deep that the roots of your vegetables can get down soil, yes.

And they dry out because they're sitting up in the mall trying to grow and the other thing is you get huge numbers of grubs, that as a result, they kind of look around and go, Hey, this mulch is okay.

But Elijah, check this out.

Yeah.

And he really will turn it in to potatoes.

The potatoes themselves.

Beets other root vegetables, onions, carrots, sweet potatoes, carrot.

Yeah, yeah.

And so you'll get little holes typically towards the top that are about as big around your finger, but just just the right size for grub to get in there and feed.

And so you know, how do you control that organically or in organically reduce your organic amount of organic debris reduce the amount of organic debris got it?

Yeah, okay.

I mean, that's like telling your typical organic gardener No no, that that's that's just that's just heresy.

But anyway, that's there is like anything else in life you can do too much of it Sure.

Makes sense.

You adults that come out.

And they're about a quarter the size, but they look just like this pretty much.

Same color pattern hosting this was made out of glass went away, which is really neat.

But at any rate, they will they're typically only about an inch long.

And and they will come out at night and feed on tree leaves primarily.

And Ricean feeding on most.

Our Crab Apple Apple and oak leaves.

Interesting feed on a lot of different things and you eat from the sides.

And if you haven't have and these beetles are out my way I just saw one in New York a couple days ago.

She's flicked it off for training.

That's it, I couldn't use that.

So you didn't get a bye bye because She flicked it away.

Anyway, he misses next these things will come out at night and feed and if you see your your tree leaves are disappearing, and you can't see anything on it go out after the 10 O'Clock News, that's the culprit and very usually feeding from about nine or 930 to about 1231 o'clock in the morning.

So 1030 at night is just about the middle and just perfect time got their shine light on and you may be surprised that these big hunk and beetles just chewing away on the underside or Tom Burgess edges, we're gonna be looking and so you end up getting his scalp areas on on the on leaves.

And if they're heavy enough that just strip trees out, we've got small crab apples or something like that.

And we can you know, control there it's fairly easy any any anything that says a, a stomach, insecticide, carbonyl, soda seven mouth ion probably insecticidal soap won't do a very good job.

Rota known would work, okay, if you want to go organic, okay.

Spinosad also will work.

So we've got some tools for sure.

But with the grubs in the garden, you just see an occasional one.

Worried about it to worry, you want to feel real nasty, and squishy are thrown out for the birds on the sidewalk fine.

But in a big realm of things.

No difference, got what you do.

But when you see a bunch of them that's caused, then you then you look at at and really the problem is if you got a bunch of them and inorganic matter, you're insecticides are not going to work because they're going to add sore bind to the dead organic matter.

And so you get large numbers of these in gardens, when you got lots of dead organic matter.

So the real answer is is to reduce that that organic matter over the next year or two and, and maybe plants or root vegetables in our part of the garden.

Okay, crop rotation, we've talked about that a lot, move things around.

Okay, what next?

Well, one thing that we do have seen is that and this spring was not unlike some others but but a little bit different.

And that is that we got we got it we got a good size freeze after we had already gotten trees coming out.

And this is a mulberry from my yard.

And it shows what happens associated with that, you can see that the that you've got dead leaves here, these are the leaves that came out the first time and they got froze off probably about a month ago.

And and then what's happened is is that there are a sensory buds associated with with the with with the buds.

So these are bud grope where you'd end up getting leaves.

And it takes them typically about two to three weeks to then say hey, you know, the leaves that were supposed to be there aren't there anymore.

And I need to get with it, man.

So it takes about two or three weeks for those buds to develop.

And then another week or so and they popped out and so here we are about a month after after temperatures to get down into the I think it got down as low as 2624 But But 2830 several nights in a row and essentially killed the leaves now I've got other trees in my yard turloughmore cold hardy apparently been mulberries they didn't really see a whole lot of damage.

See some in between that have just black edges this is all due to that cold snap we go and and then there's some trees that are just popping out leaves now and so a you know they were smart enough to stay inside the bed when it was real cold.

And how will this affect this trees growing season at all?

Or Absolutely.

Typically what you have is, is that a tree will and the same thing works with tree feeding insects in the spring, they're the most dangerous to the to the situation because they will what will happen is is that they have enough energy that they go through the winter with in order to produce a set of leaves and those leaves are supposed to produce food for them.

And by the time they get to the first July they're pretty well got there the food that they're going to get and from that on it's just kind of a we're going to keep a steady state and we're going to what's what what foods leaves produce from around the first July on for the rest of the season is maintaining the plant and where they really made hay and got lots of energy built up was in those first few months of spring.

And so if you if they lose that energy that the overwintered by this first said leaves Dianne, they've got to put on some more and other energy budget as well, because they spent extra, they spent double the amount of energy they put out these and they didn't work, put out these potentially the same amount of energy.

And now it's lower than it was sure.

And if I lose this set again, they may die.

Oh, wow.

So they do have, they do have other bugs that will show that will shoot.

But if they just don't have enough food in the tank, very, very gunners.

And so that's, and so it's important that these leaves do well.

And these would be very symmetry would be very sensitive, then to getting some insect eats all the leaves in the spring, which would be another way that they would lose the leave.

And then they could be in serious trouble.

So as things are now if it goes ahead and goes through the season, nothing serious really happens.

They'll produce enough energy, they might not fill up the tank quite by the end of the season.

But next year, they'll catch up.

You know, we went to Japan House earlier this spring.

And if you follow Japan house, you know the cherry blossoms didn't bloom this year for that exact same reason.

So different tree, but kind of still the same effects of that cold snap.

Well, it was a different cold snap.

Oh snap, it took out the cherry blossoms was a 10 below zero that we've had locally here.

And throughout much of the Midwest, I believe in late December.

Okay, gotcha.

That's the on cherries, the married plants, the flower buds are more sensitive to very severe cold, whereas the leaf buds are not so susceptible.

And so it wasn't the late frost that got the cherry blossoms.

It was the 10 below zero.

Gotcha, gotcha.

So anytime that happens, that'll take out your rose claws, but you really see the effects and how the trees have to try to make up for or decide, alright, we're not flowering this year, I need to save it, you know, and you save some of that energy.

And same with your tree.

And for in a charity case, they're going to have those leaves should produce because they're not they're not spending energy producing reproductive structures, flowers, it's all going into leaves, chances are the Bloom will be even bigger than it would have been.

Because they're going to have extra energy in the tank to do so that gives us something to look forward to.

So do we need to do anything?

Let's say we've someone's got trees at home, like this that are damaged?

Do you need to do any pruning or cutting back?

Is it too early?

Too late?

What tips do you have for folks who may have some damage like this?

Budget?

Watch it, watch it, keep the printers in your pocket.

Keep them on stamp or, or in the shed or wherever?

Yeah, you know, trees kind of hurt a little bit, let's say you need to do is hurt some more.

Cow.

If you do need to prune it, go ahead and do so.

Because what's left will go ahead and produce food for the plant.

But if you can kind of give it not bothered.

And in spite of the next few weeks, these will dry up enough that they will fall off.

I mean, you're still right now, but they will fall off and come another month from now you won't even know that's so fast.

So nobody sometimes will say why didn't you go out and pick all dead leaves a really bad look the other direction for two or three weeks?

Yeah, we'll take care of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

I agree with you.

That's fascinating, though, how it adapts how nature adapts.

And just so cool.

I've never stopped learning stuff like that.

All right, what's the next item?

Well, one another thing associated with with with winter is that we happen to be having fairly cool temperatures right now in the Midwest.

And in we're having a better time now we had earlier in the year we had a bunch of temperatures that were up in the up in the in the 70s and the 80s, probably three or four weeks of those.

And in that situation, the bugs kind of got ahead of the plants.

And what I'm showing here is is that for most plants, probably it is that they will start doing things and functioning at about 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a rule, there's some lower temperatures, some are higher, but most insects will be around 50 degrees, we call those base temperatures.

And so you can see that there's a difference of about 11 degrees on average between between the insects and the plants.

And in a normal year, things come along and they warm up gradually.

And you have a certain amount of fluctuation in the spring back and forth into the 30s to the 50s to the 70s to whatever and then and then it gets into after Memorial Day typically warms up for good okay.

When we have a lot of early, high temperatures like we had this year, the insects kind of get ahead because overall the trees are developing and in other plants are trees and shrubs and other plants.

Some sort of insects in the insects will typically, to faster.

Now the insects always have an ace in the hole.

And that is not all their eggs hatched same time.

And so we always leave some back.

And so some people think, well, it gets real warm and it gets real cold.

You got rid of all they died?

No, no, no.

Insects have been around for 300 million years.

They are not getting fooled.

They've got a backup, they were around a dinosaur show.

And also, you know, they're not that stupid.

And so they don't, they don't put all their eggs in the same basket.

They don't all hatch at once.

And so some will be more dormant and will go dormant, through even a very warm temperature stays warm and the ones that has to rear ahead, and the others have to catch up.

But if you get a real cold snap, it kills a bunch of insects.

There's some that are left by the hatch.

And they'll do all right, and they'll bring the thing along.

Now, is there a chance for the pendulum to court sort of swing back?

Can the plants catch up with the insects or since they're gone, and we're having kind of a cool period right now.

And that's what's happening right now.

We're having a lot of a lot of, we've had a couple a couple of weeks, two weeks, three weeks, I'm gonna guess, where we've had the temperatures that have gotten down into the, into the low 40s, or even the high 30s At night, and the highs were only gotten into 4548 5254.

Well, what's happening in is the trees and shrubs and other plants are growing, albeit slowly due to the temperatures not getting real warm.

The base temperature on insects is only 50 degrees, which means if attempts are getting you to about 50 It's like that they never happened.

They did nothing.

They are suspended animation.

They're cold blooded animals, they they're associated with a temperature of it's, that's that's the external temperature is what they're going to give the plants a little time to keep growing and get ahead of the insects to where normally you have less damage.

Wow.

Now this year, we had all those 7080 degree temperatures.

And we're still probably about a week ahead insect wise over plants right now.

Oh, wow.

But if we get another couple of free weeks of go nuts going to warm up.

We're seeing a warming trend.

Probably won't make a whole lot of difference.

But if we get a cold temperature, then the plants will get ahead of the insects.

Interesting.

That's fascinating to me.

It is isn't it?

We've got about five minutes left and I know you have to talk about that slug.

Get it over well, one thing I really liked my hostas, that's what it likes.

Like violets.

Oh, okay, like impatience.

Okay, like petunias.

They like anything which tends to have thin leaves on it then leaves okay and not real glossy and full of wax.

waxy covering.

This is this is a native slug.

And it is I had to buy this was this was a refrigerator magnet I just had to buy had to have it because it was a spinning am to me image of a spotted garden slot, which is our largest slug that we have in the Midwest.

They get up to about typically about three inches long.

And when they get get to trucking, and they're moving up a site siding or something like this, they'll stretch up to about six inches, so they'll get up to about twice as long.

But they're brownish or beige and color.

And they have black spots, mainly towards the front, a little bit towards the back to tentacles which is what slugs have their shells snails.

Our most common sieve snail our most common slug is a great garden slug.

And it's a little guy, it's typically only about three quarters of an inch long to an inch, something like that.

And they can be gray.

You can be black, they can be tan, they can be blonde, they have a whole wide range of colors, all called Great Garden slug.

Obviously you know what the first one was found what color it was, okay, Gray had to be gray.

But any rate, slugs are gonna like cool damp weather, just like most diseases do.

And so when we have a cold spell, we've had dry weather, but if had been more wet, you'd have more more slug damage.

And they will unlike most insects, which tend to eat from the edges of leaves, slugs and snails will eat from the center.

And so a good clue that you've got slugs that are being affected is if you have holes in your hostile leaves or or whatever.

And, and that's a clue what you got him.

Now there are as many home remedies to control slugs as there are ways to kill plants and ruin soil.

Yes, I could see that.

We've got about two minutes left.

So tell us the trick.

Don't leave us hanging.

There are there are slug baits out there that have iron phosphide in them.

Most common brand name is called Sluggo sau GGO Sluggo where if you're old like me and remember the Nancy comic strip Sluggo was the main guy in attendance.

I never can say without thinking of him.

Any rate that works well okay.

Copper collars around things.

Interestingly enough, if you have a strip of copper, it contains an inherent electrical charge and it's something wet and slugs are always wet.

They're full of slime covered with slime to touch that they'll get a shock and they will turn away interest that will work or assault and if anybody have ever been to a Bonneville Salt Flats, you can see for miles and not see a single plant because you don't want your backyard to look like that.

Right.

Okay.

What ashes anything alkaline do the same thing.

stale and the limestone do the same thing.

Yeah, to get rid of slugs, but it will ruin your soil for decades, if not hundreds of years, if not longer, but there are good options.

Iron Phosphate, okay, we're great copper strips work great.

Phil, always a pleasure.

Always a good time when you show up.

Thank you so much.

And thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time.

Good night.