Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

Here we go – it’s spring and people wake up to some troubles with their lawns.  Starlings dig their beaks into the soil and cause “holes” everywhere – some dunnocks (hedge sparrows) follow the starling’s idea.  Grass grubs have always been a “problem” in NZ gardens and lawns. C-shaped grubs that live underground, feeding on roots of grasses and other plants/shrubs.   There are a number of species in the Beetle Family Scarabeidae (scarab beetles) but the native grass grub, Costelytra zealandica, has always been in New Zealand. Its traditional habitat and host plants were native grasses, such as tussocks, and they occur at quite high altitudes.   There is no doubt that these beetles considered the new high-nutrient imported grasses as ice-cream, especially when we started planting whole paddocks full of that stuff!  With all those birds, your lawn becomes a lot more biodiverse – personally, I love that!  Mosses grow as the pH lowers; they are miniature forests in which an enormous