Week 14: mini-research; before writing—

           It’s still too early for the sun to fully shine on the front side of the house. I think to myself I wish I would have started this project in the sunny part of the yard. I pull on my gardening gloves and hand Garrett his; we are ready to finish planting the rest of our bulbs and seeds. I pull the bag of potting soil over, I pour in so my planter is about half full. I dig my hands in to start breaking up the soil; my son shows me his great new technique which to me looks like he’s just making a mess.   But I try it anyway, because that’s what good mothers do, and if you put a little though into it works quite well.  

            After a short while we are ready to plant our bleeding heart bulbs, which look more like roots then bulbs.  I always read the directions of how deep and far apart then when it’s time to start planting I do it the way I want anyway. Maybe that’s why half the time what I plant doesn’t grow.  After a few minutes all the bulbs/root are planted.  I carry the planter to its new home on the front deck.

            Now it’s time to work on the flower bed along the side of my driveway, this year we decided that we wanted to make it a little wider than last year.  We drag the rakes, wheelbarrow, one large spade and one very small one. I think back to when my Mom bought that for Garrett when he was about 4, we dig our shovels into the cold earth.  Thank goodness the sun is at our back now because my pants keep slipping and I start feeling the breeze but the shining sun makes it’s all bare able, till I can stand up and tighten my belt. As I start to toss the dirt into the wheelbarrow I see what looks like huge maggots.

            Both Garrett and I stop dead in our tracks, after a few seconds I knew that they weren’t maggots I was pretty sure they where some kind of grub. I have Garrett go get his Dad, and he confirms that they are in fact grubs.  Ok, so how do we get rid of them? With both us having no idea how to get rid of them, I keep plugging away at widening my flower bed.  Every grub I see I tossed into the sun, I figured they wouldn’t like the sun when they usually live under the dirt.  I planted the last of my seed and decided it time to tackle how to get rid of those gross bugs.

            I know that typing into Google “How to kill lawn grubs?” is going to come back with a lot of different possibilities. Milky Spores was the first options I saw within the all natural remedies.  Who gets to name these things and milky spores? How  Milky Spore works is by spreading it over the soil over time and with the normal feeding process of the grubs they will eat the spore then the bacteria will start growing within the grub and it dies. As it decomposes in the dirt it will then release tons of new spores into the ground preventing any new grubs.

            So I started looking into my other options my husband called from Home Depot asking if I wanted him to buy something to kill the grubs. I told him about the Milky Spores I just read about online and then told him to try to find something natural. “But Amy you want to kill them right? Pretty much anything natural isn’t going to really kill it.” For a split second I thought about composting pile and the recycling bins, I had to remind myself that he does it for me not because he believes in it. “Ok, just get whatever you think is best.”