In digging up the beds some, I came upon some very, VERY big reddish-brown larvae. About the size of half of my thumb. Looked very Star Trek and very creepy, and because I found them in the beds where the cabbage was, I worried they were some kind of pest similar to the cabbage moth.
So I did some research. Turns out they are Soldier Fly larvae. Apparently harmless, often found where vegetable matter is decomposing. The soldier fly is a large wasp-like fly, but harmless to vegetation, animals and humans. Much relieved.
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I found "maggots" in my red worm bin and they turned out to be soldier fly larvae. They were pretty harmless in that case too, because they don't eat the red worms or anything. But in googling them I stumbled upon lots of web sites about composting food waste using SFL... especially at large scales like in restaurants and stuff. They are even more efficient than red worms, if you can handle the maggot factor. Which I don't think I could.
ReplyDelete:)Jenny D.
oh, good to know, jenny! they are pretty gross. but maybe i'll throw them in the earth bin. we are going to start composting with red worms again too. got to get on that.
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