Whaddya Make of These Critters?

[Setec Astronomy]

Decided to dump out a couple of 24 qt. planters to fluff up the soil and mix in some starter fertilizer, and found five of these in one of them; I'd say about 1/4" diameter by almost an inch long:

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[worth1]

Some sort of grub worm.
June bug larva mostly where I live.
They eat plant roots.
I have armadillos that help keep them in check and leave Little holes in the yard where they dig for the worms.
This doesn't bother me because my yard is a forest and it is just part of nature.

[bower]

Yeah I would second the vote for a beetle grub of some kind. You can see the grubs I got in Black Vine Weevil thread. That one is a serious pest.

There are good beetles too! See if you can find pics to match grub to beetle?

[bower]

Just looking at a few pics... the good beetles (which eat bad beetles and such) their larvae have some chops! Check out the face on "Rove beetle larvae" or carabid beetle larvae and you know what they eat.
vs I'm thinking the root destroyers have more of a rounded face, no tusks. For example "weevil beetle larvae".

[Setec Astronomy]

I went back outside after I posted this, and was thinking about it, and decided Japanese Beetle grub seemed like a good candidate...and sure enough, the online pictures I found look pretty close to mine. I had the dirt out of 4 planters today and that first one was the only one with any grubs (wound up 6 total--that I saw).

I must have seen some um...they aren't Japanese Beetles, I thought they were Oriental Beetles...they look like Japanese Beetles but they are not as brightly colored. I saw them on something last year so I put out a trap and got mostly the dull ones and a few real Japanese Beetles. But I was just reading about Oriental Beetles and it says the pheromone for Japanese Beetles doesn't work for Oriental Beetles. So all I know is I'm glad I got them out of my planter. They seemed to be sleeping pretty good but when I put them out in the sun they crawled around quite a bit until I got tired of keeping an eye on them.

[Nan6b]

Japanese beetles or potato beetles, or some sort of bad thing. Mine have very tough skins & you gotta really grind them into the ground to kill them.

[TomHillbilly]

Japanese Beetle, and a June Bug larva look the same. Except a June bug larva will gets almost 3 times the size. I call um all grub worms and be done with it. They are all bad, especially for taters. They eat enough to cause a tater to rot, then move on to the next one. Moles is their natural enemy. If ya got plenty of grubs-- you will get plenty of moles. LOL
Worth1-- never seen a armadillo--I wondered what they liked to eat.

[Nan6b]

They eat roots. If you have them in your lawn, you get bare/brown spots in the lawn.

[worth1]

Japanese Beetle, and a June Bug larva look the same. Except a June bug larva will gets almost 3 times the size. I call um all grub worms and be done with it. They are all bad, especially for taters. They eat enough to cause a tater to rot, then move on to the next one. Moles is their natural enemy. If ya got plenty of grubs-- you will get plenty of moles. LOL
Worth1-- never seen a armadillo--I wondered what they liked to eat.

They are very good to eat and by far one of the best tasting wild game you will ever eat.
They carry leprosy so I stopped eating them.
I shot 3 one right after another in about 10 seconds or less with a Winchester pump shotgun and my older brother and I had a big wild game BBQ from all the meat we had harvested.
Told everyone the armadillo was rabbit and the rabbit was armadillo.
The ""rabbit"" won hands down.
Then my sister in law started giving us that look knowing she had been had.
Now I just let the things east grub worms and what ever else they can dig up.

[Clkeiper]

Up here skunks re the number one enemy of Japanese beetle grubs.

[Setec Astronomy]

I guess I'm adding milky spore lawn application to to-do list and apparently a drop spreader as they don't recommend broadcast. Anybody use milky spore in containers? Putting it on my lawn may help the overall problem but it's not going to stop them in my containers where I've already found them.

[MissS]

Last year was the first year that I tried Milky Spore. I did put it in my containers and garden beds too. I hope that it works. I sure had a bad winter with the moles and voles ripping up the lawn. It is bacteria that you are adding so I see no reason not to use it in pots. Last year the Japanese Beetles were fierce here, I do hope to see some reduction in their numbers but this does take another application before it works very well.