Bugs love organic farmers.

Why I hear you ask? Well because we don't use pesticides so they can move on in and make a meal of our veggies with little to no fear of the consequences. 

This is one of the reasons we had to dig out the original keyhole.  It was infested with the larvae of the Rhino Beetle who by the way love to munch on juicy veg roots so wiping them out.  In case you have never seen this adorable bug here are a few we found in the first couple of spadefuls of soil we dug out.





As we dug down into the soil, originally with the intention solely of removing the bugs we realised it was far bigger a job than first anticipated.  So much so we had to literally take every bit of soil from the keyhole, sieve through it to find nearly 150 of these darlings in the first couple of days of sifting.  

Maddy and Chloe could not believe the numbers they were digging out.   


Or how big some of them were.



Even the dogs got involved in the hunt.
Russell my Terrier assures me the bugs are quite tasty, well for all of about five seconds, he then threw the one he had eaten up. But they do make your skin feel silky soft apparently, so guess who got a bath for his trouble. Yep you guessed it.

Russell wearing just above his collar bug juice, nice one pup.
 

In the end we had to dig out the whole of the keyhole so we decided to create a new bed for my fruit canes and build a new keyhole plus two further planters using the sifted soil we had displaced. 

Sorry Ceri, I know how hard you worked on the original keyhole and I truly am grateful, but the bugs were eating everything I planted in it before they had a chance to grow.  On asking around I was told, taking the bugs out was the best option followed by spraying with pesticide. 

As I am eco I am avoiding going down the pesticide route however, this does not mean the larvae of the Rhino Beetle have it all their own way, not one bit.  I have declared war on all bugs particularly these larvae and have sprayed Neem Oil (organic bug control at its best seeing as it worked on controlling caterpillars that invaded my cabbages) in the hope that it will fend them off and I can actually get to grow and eat the fruits of my labour. 

Mmmm home grown organic veg, you cannot beat it.