I found these blue worm/Rollie polli looking things in my soil, can someone please tell me what these are and if they're bad or good to your garden before I even use the soil

They look like some sort of Grub Worms, which are the larvae of beetles; they eat the roots of plants. I found this article giving tips on eradicating them: http://www.veggiegardener.com/...

Cristiangee said:I found these blue worm/Rollie polli looking things in my soil, can someone please tell me what these are and if they're bad or good to your garden before I even use the soil

If they are widespread in the lawn and garden, a spray of beneficial nematodes or an application of milky spore powder will help a lot. Both seek grubs to feed on and will spread throughout the soil for years as long as there are grubs. Neither are harmful to beneficial insects like worms or bees or ladybugs.

Yardenman said:

If they are widespread in the lawn and garden, a spray of beneficial nematodes or an application of milky spore powder will help a lot. Both seek grubs to feed on and will spread throughout the soil for years as long as there are grubs. Neither are harmful to beneficial insects like worms or bees or ladybugs.

Milky spore only works if they are Japanese beetle grubs (and in at least some areas is not as effective as it was once thought to be). There are several similar related grubs that are not Japanese beetles so these would need to be identified to determine if milky spore is an option.

Hmm.. good chance those are larvae of "May Beetles," June Beetles", or possibly those Green Rose Chafers. They'd be consuming decaying matter and some roots around the surface at night.. The adults are annoying, but beneficial pollinators.

Possible Suspects (Southern California):

See a bunch of these flying around? Bzzz *bump*... bzzz *bump* *thud*

sooby said:

Milky spore only works if they are Japanese beetle grubs (and in at least some areas is not as effective as it was once thought to be). There are several similar related grubs that are not Japanese beetles so these would need to be identified to determine if milky spore is an option.

You are quite correct about milky spore attacking only "japanese" beetle larvae, though I thought all scarab beetle grubs are included in that category.

Yardenman said:

You are quite correct about milky spore attacking only "japanese" beetle larvae, though I thought all scarab beetle grubs are included in that category.

Only one species of Scarab, which is the Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica), is susceptible to milky spore but not the other Scarabs like June Beetle, Chafers etc. I was at a talk by an entomologist a couple of years ago who said that even for Japanese beetle milky spore is no longer as effective as it was once thought to be (at least in some areas), and that the nematodes are likely a better choice if avoiding "chemicals". The way to identify the grubs is to look at the spine pattern on their rear ends (raster). Figure 2 on this page gives the pattern for several of them but the grubs tend to take a rather dim view of having their bottoms inspected

https://extension.entm.purdue....