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The chaffer grub is a nasty piece of work and the first time I came across was after it had eaten the roots of dozens of my mother’s prized Fuchsia plants and almost left her in tears! The affected plants had begun sprouting in spring as normal and then their foliage went limp as though starved of nutrient and when my poor parent went to inspect the plants just came up in her hand!

The nematodes you speak of are the accepted natural solution, only it’s not always made clear that the nematodes themselves lie dormant or die off if the winter is too cold. Whereas their prey will continue to eat your plants throughout the winter. Even if the nematodes do survive your winter their hunger does not return and they are not effective chaffer grub killers until the soil temperature reaches double figures! So this past winter which has been unusually cold and long-lasting has not been the best time to begin any nematode treatment.
There are chemical solutions to the problem, some much more effective than others and I’ll start with the least effective treatment first because it is the one most readily available to you. The Bayer Garden Provado Lawn Grub Killer is a sachet solution that’s added to water and applied by watering can. Also under the Provado label is the Vine Weevil Killer which is pretty much the same thing in a different packet. They do kill the grub. However, their major failing for the consumer is that they require water and as such, each time you water your plants or it rains – you are effectively diluting the treatment which is good for the manufacturer – because you will need to buy more.

Without doubt the most effective treatment for chaffer grubs is a bucket of blue grains very similar to iron fillings that you came across at school one time… When I treated my mothers Fuchsias I used a hired mixer to stir my dry soil 100 litres at a time and added just ONE TEASPOONFUL and left it in the machine for ten minutes to mix! No grubs survived this. We no longer have the mixer but add the ‘iron fillings’ to a pot mix like you sprinkle salt on your dinner. It still works and lasts for years! Not weeks like the diluted solutions so readily available. It goes by the name of ‘Intercept’ and is available in a 5Kg plastic drum. We bought ours back in 2001 and we still have somewhere between half to a third remaining. Now for the bad news… It cost around £235 when we bought it. Yep! We gulped too, then bit the bullet and would do it again now – if we had to. And finally, you would have to ‘find a way’ to obtain it like we did because it is not available for public sale…..