How to deal with strawberry khrushchem: folk and professional remedies

To begin with, the mass invasion of the May beetle can occur no more often than in 4-5 years. In the rest of the years, he behaves quite peacefully and almost does not harm our landings, so we even forget how to deal with strawberries with khrushch.

The fact is that the development cycle of this insect is such that in the larval stage it develops for a rather long time, from two to three years, and when hatched, it dies shortly after mating. Therefore, his invasion of the gardens is so cyclical.

Biology

Before you begin the fight with the larvae of the May beetle on strawberries, you need to carefully study the enemy, otherwise a conceived event may not bring the proper effect.

Classification

Chafer beetle or Khrushchev is a genus of insects from the order of beetles. They are quite large representatives of beetles, reaching a length of more than three centimeters.

Their habitat is the countries of Europe and Asia, where the raspberries are dangerous pests of crops. Very often they appear in garden and garden plots.

Description

May chafer is a rather large insect; its length exceeds three centimeters. On his black head is a pair of lamellar antennae, which, with a large approximation, can even cause a slight short-term horror.

The body is covered by hard elytra, painted in brown or brown with veins, under which there is a pair of strong wings. Many in childhood caught May bugs, and know how well they can fly.

By the way! May bugs and their larvae are a good bait when catching a chub, ide, burbot or catfish.

Food

The nutrition of the May bug is exclusively vegetable. If adult insects eat leaves of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, in general, without presenting a big problem for owners of summer cottages, then larvae are a real scourge for agriculture. The fact is that they live under a layer of soil and feed on plant roots there.

Despite the fact that strawberries are not listed in their preferences, it is the damage to the roots of this plant that brings the most grief to our gardeners.

Our help! Many gardeners call strawberries cultivars of strawberry ordinary!

Reproduction and lifestyle

May beetles appear, as the name implies, in May, at this time the leaves on the birch are just beginning to bloom, which these pests with pleasure bite. At the same time, the years of beetles occur - the process of their reproduction.

Soon after mating, the females lay extensive eggs in the soil, in which sometimes there are up to seventy eggs. Soon after, adult insects, having completed their mission, die.

Soon, from 15 to 30 days, eggs hatch from eggs, which look like tiny maggots in the first year. they do not bring any harm, since they feed mainly on plant debris.
Having wintered at a depth, very often under a dunghill or compost heap, in the second year their rapid growth and development begins, after which they pupate in the third year of their life and an adult appears.If the year turned out to be unfavorable for development, the larva may not pupate, but one more summer season will exist in this phase.

May beetle larvae of the second and third years of life on strawberries are the most dangerous. They develop rapidly, consuming a large amount of food, most often the roots of all kinds of plants. Moreover, the softer and fluffier the roots, the more willingly the larvae of the grubber attack them.

Fight

Now that we have met with the enemy in detail, the fight against the May bug on strawberries will be easier and more understandable for us. In order for this battle to become victorious for us, we will begin to consider its aspects with countering the larvae.

Larvae

Everyone understands that the fewer larvae survive the winter, the less they pupate. Consequently, less adult adults will appear in spring, and females will lay a minimum number of eggs. therefore, measures must be taken to eradicate insects at this stage.

A set of measures to protect strawberries from the Maybug larva includes the following measures:

• Digging soil with manual selection of larvae. This should be done in case of a massive defeat in the May crusts of your site.
• Chafer beetle and its larvae cannot tolerate a large concentration of nitrogen in the soil. Therefore, one of the effective measures is the sowing of row-spacings with white clover or other green manure, capable of accumulating nitrogen on its roots.
• For the same purpose, to increase nitrogen in the soil, they are watered around the beds with a solution of ammonia - ammonia.
• The use of a biological preparation of the Nemabact type is based on the content of nematodes in it, which are the natural enemies of an insect that infects its larvae.
• In the most extreme case, it is recommended to treat the soil with poisons: “Aktara”, “Bazudin” and other chemistry.

Advice! Watering the soil with "muck", do not forget that by destroying pests, you simultaneously destroy a lot of useful soil microorganisms. In addition, “muck” may accumulate in the future harvest.

However, the best remedy for the Maybug larvae on strawberries is a thick layer of plant mulch, which will prevent the female from laying her eggs in the ground, and she will carry them to another site.

Adult insects - adults

Now we will describe how to deal with the adult May Khrushchev, their people have also accumulated quite a lot.

The first of the popular ways is scaring. Of course, here we do not mean the use of scarecrows, as from birds, but our beloved one and a half with wings, hung on a stick stuck in the ground, is quite suitable. The noise that it creates during rotation from the action of a small breeze is enough to scare away both the May bugs and other pests.

Many plants that grow near your site or directly on it can also scare away. Elderberry is good in this respect, this semi-poisonous shrub scares off many pests, even mice.

May bugs do not like to fly to a site where cruciferous crops bloom. If you plant lupine or rapeseed in the winter, then in the spring, their flowering in the area will not only drive away the May raspberries, but will also attract many pollinating insects, the same bees.

You can do differently, treat the plantation with a pungent preparation. As a way to process strawberries from the May beetle, you can use the infusion of celery, the same elderberry or chopped parts of cruciferous plants.

Other summer residents catch bugs with various traps. Using the fact that at night the khrushchs fly into the light, they do this:

• sticky tapes near bulbs or lanterns;
• smear the branches of trees or specially hung cardboard boxes with grease;
• they put jars of water in which they add kerosene or machine oil.

In the morning, the May bugs that are caught are collected and destroyed or taken with them for fishing.

As always, at the end of the work, we invite our visitors to watch a video on the topic discussed. This time we chose a story about how an enthusiast is engaged in the maintenance of the May bug as a pet.