My First Time - Tea Tree Troubles

[Watto]

For the first time I had a significant issue with grubs in a pot. Curl grubs were everywhere in a Leptospermum Cardwell I recently purchased and I had never really seen the number of grubs in one pot as I had with this one, there were a least 30, probably 40 in a 20 cm plastic pot. The result of their activity resulted in a tree with hardly any roots remaining and I was saddened. At least the "bare rooting" process was easy!
Long story short, I repotted the tree and I am currently crossing my fingers but I only give it about 25% chance of survival. As for the grubs, they were dispatched onto the shed roof where the local magpies had a picnic.

[Ryceman3]

Hi Watto, never had curl grubs but that sounds like a pretty comprehensive demolition of root mass... bugger, at least the maggies are happy! I would be sitting the freshly repotted tree in a water bath to give it every chance of survival. Just my

[TimS]

Fortunatly *touchwood* i've not had curl grubs in my bonsai pots, but i was repotting an big old self watering pot of herbs for my dad and it was full of them. I left them out for the magpies but even they turned their noses up at them!

I'm sure the tree will be much happier without those in the pot!

[Rory]

Nice tree watto.

In my opinion, with a Lepto, if you want to increase your chances of survival, remove ALL the flowers and flower buds immediately and don't allow any new ones to form for a least 6 weeks.... but don't cut them off.... gently pluck them off with your hands while holding the base. Its meticulous and painful, but it works for me.

With that much root damage, I would have cut off a lot more of the branching so there is less stress on the roots, especially with a Letpo.

If you did this repot today, I would take more branching off.

But if you did this days ago, I would now leave it to its own devices, as often people cut off and change their mind days later.... meanwhile the tree has been busy developing new shoots throughout the branching and then is severely stressed further by more removal of branching. Then the effort that the tree puts into certain branching has been removed and increases the chances of death.

[terryb]

Interesting. The only time I have issues with curl grubs is where the the substrate is mostly fine organics (eg potting mix). Hope it pulls through for you.

[melbrackstone]

crikey!

Fingers crossed the tree will power on after getting rid of that mob of freeloaders!

[KIRKY]

Wow! The grubs certainly look fat n healthy, they have had a field day. Hope it pulls thru, agree with R3 place it in a tray of water with some seasol to help stimulate the roots. Keep us updated lovely tree n pot combo
Cheers
Kirky

[Redsonic]

Love how you have documented the Magpie party!
Good luck with the tree

[Watto]

It is currently sitting in a water bowl and in the glasshouse. I have never had curl grubs in a bonsai pot and I think its because I use a very course mix but this was definitely a surprise. The tree was originally in a standard black plastic pot with standard nursery potting mix so that would explain it.
Thanks for the advice Rory but its probably too late to give it another trim so it looks like its cross the fingers and hope.

[Watto]

This little darling has survived, albeit it very damaged.
It is alive but looks like it is dramatically over potted now, but there will be no work for another year or so.

[Watto]

Forgot the photo.

[Matt S]

Phew! Glad it survived. Still plenty to work with though!

[Watto]

Thanks Matt, it will take some time to get back to good health but it is alive and that's the good news.

[RogerW]

I would definitely let the source nursery know of the curl grubs. The grower should examine all the potting mix to ensure the problem does not occur again. Infestations of this nature will have a bad effect on a nursery's reputation, bad for business.

Roger

[Sno]

It doesn’t look out of the woods yet . Has it pushed any new growth yet ? I have had a quite a few trees ‘sit ‘ and hang around and then eventually die , usually in spring just when you think they will come good . If it hasn’t any new growth I would give it some liquid fert and over water a little bit (not water log ) to try and shock ,stimulate into something while the weather is warm .