My lawn looks pretty good but a few spots need work. As I was adding compost I found tons of earthworms and a few of these really big grubs. Can it be identified exactly? I also found one or two tiny grubs but I lost them before I could take pictures.
Hi there, I believe those are JAPANESE BEETLE grubs.. Birds love those, I feed them to my chickens.. :) I attached a link to a good webpage.. Greetings Susanne(SUE)
Japanese beetle grubs want only fresh plant tissue. Not stuff that's composting. Beyond that, yours are *way* too big to e JBs.
Instead, it's the youngster of the green fruit beetle, AKA green peach beetle. These youngsters specialize in decaying plant material and are common inhabitants of the cooler areas in a compost pile.
They won't bother your live plants even if you spread them with the compost.
We just transplanted some daylilies that have been growing in 5-gallon pots in Stay-Green potting soil. To my surprise, we found these same grubs in the potting soil, as well as earthworms. I can't imagine how they got in there. The daylilies were all bare-root and very clean when we planted them. Apparently they did not do any damage to the plants, but I was shocked to find so many of these huge, fat grubs.
