If, like me, you are a bit of a dunce when it comes to things with either too many legs (like centipedes and their fellow soily denizens) or not enough legs (worms and such like) then you’re probably alarmed to see things squirming through your soil and generally eating your grass and/or comestible vegetables.
Leatherjackets are one such creepy crawly that personally make me go all squeamish and girly. They are the larvae of the crane fly – which you may know better as the Daddy Long Legs. Although they may mainly appear to be a nuisance when banging noisily against your lights and inciting horror in all of those for whom dangly legs are an anathema, their most irritating phase is actually when they are still babies.
These little suckers like to chow down on the roots of your turf, damaging or killing the grass plants. The solutions are:
- Try pick them out by hand – in the early evening they are often visible at the surface crawling about in their grey-skinned, nightmarish way
- Apply nematodes. Nematodes are little worms that are parasitical on certain kinds of insect and bug. Specific species of nematode are available that purely eat leatherjackets. Buy a box, drop them on your lawn and let them eat the leatherjackets. Job done!
So, now you know!
