Start With Your Green Waste
Aloha CRB Action Kaua’i Friends.
Whatever combination you may choose to protect and treat your palms, including injectable pesticides, crown sprays, essential oil sprays, other non-toxic methods, building palm health and immunity, the most important thing that everyone seems to agree on is to eliminate CRB breeding sites - nurseries - by removing decaying organic matter or managing it either as a beetle trap or in such a way to kill larvae and beetles.
Compost is great stuff. Green waste accumulates every day on our Garden Island… and CRB dive bomb even the shortest piles and lay eggs in it.
So what can we do?
Take a lot of the green waste off site every week.
What you keep, make the pile low in height, and keep it in the sunlight; shade and moisture make great CRB nurseries.
Turn it frequently, larvae die in the sun and don’t breed well in material that is being disturbed.
Keep it netted, so the beetle can’t get into the pile to lay eggs, instead they get caught in the netting and die in the sun. Emerging beetles that have been developing over the several months it takes to go from egg to adult in your pile will get caught in the net and die.
Chickens and pigs, and even ducks eat larvae on the surface, let them scratch through it.
Get it steamed to kill larvae and eggs.
Now, let’s say we have a fairly small pile of decomposing green waste that is free from larvae and eggs, how do we keep it that way?
Get some free Tekken netting that is coming to the island shortly (in the meantime, here are sources you can purchase from) and cover your green waste completely with several inches going past the edge of the pile on all sides.
If it’s available in quantity, add a lot of fresh chicken manure to the pile, ideally 25%.
Use small amounts for fertilizing and soil amendment, checking carefully for the presence of tiny eggs, droppings and larvae.
Monitor, turn and re-net the pile.
Get CRB dogs to check the pile periodically.
CTAHR was doing some research with propagating fungi to kill larvae in decomposing mulch. I am experimenting at home with propagating anesopliae metarizhium on rice, which I purchased from a mushroom cultivation supplier. If successful, that could be added to my pile as a deterrent to larvae.
I’ll take photos and post this experiment to the website as time goes on.
And please be sure to enter your email here and encourage friends, neighbors and family to do the same!
Warmest wishes,
Merlyn
Coordinator
CRB Action Kaua’i