"Unethical" way to get substrate!

piggy145

piggy145

L2
Hello,

This should probably be your last resort to get a substrate. I'm just passing this along to those who want to keep beetles but don't want the hassle of making the substrate. Or if there is an emergency and you need substrate as soon as possible. 

So if you go to a park where there are wood chips as the bedding for the playground, if the park has been there for at least a year, the cool substrate under the wood chips are the perfect substrate for many beetle grubs. Just make sure the wood chips are organic and don't have any additives. They should be for the most part fine as there shouldn't be any harmful chemicals as kids play. 

Now I know it sounds weird, but bring your shovel and just get to the underneath of the top layer and it should be the perfect sub. Just give it a smell and make sure its the earthy smell. 

Take as much as you need and that's all. Just passing it along... 

 
How would you even know that the chips on a playground are organic? Did you see them lay them down? I have to question that.

Just- sorry, I really don't know why you wouldn't just go get potting soil if you REALLY needed substrate and not go for old treated wood chips which have sat around. Landscaping chips and the stuff that they use on playgrounds, if it isn't the new rubber chunk stuff, isn't usually free of anything? They dye the chips and put stuff on them to prevent it from rotting and turning into sludge and I imagine that would seep into the soil over time. That's also why bugs generally aren't already living underneath that "nice" layer of wood bits and one reason why it's used to deter insects on college campuses. I think I'll stick with organic potting soil for cheap substrate, and not something that likely has candy wrappers, bits of plastic, migratory cigarette-butts in it, or worse. There's so many things that could be in that stuff on playgrounds... if you don't get arrested for doing something like that.

 
Oh I'm not desperate for substrate in the slightest, but i just want to do growth rate studies with this type of organic component...

For science!

 
I'd be way more concerned about any pesticides and herbicides that have been sprayed around a park, that seems like a deal breaker for me. This is why I never collect stuff, even leaves, from public parks.  

 
Sometimes the wood is even treated with chemicals which could hurt the larva. I have an example. 

Thought I'd think outside the box and found "leaf compost" from a landscape place that mass produces it. Well I picked some up and up and used it. 2 months later I checked all of my once healthy flower beetle larvae and most of them died. You never know what the ingredients come in contact with. 

 
If you're in the US, you can safely assume that ALL materials from public parks, playgrounds and such have been treated with pesticides and/or herbicides at some point, and probably repeatedly.  It's been my observation that in this country, the second that most people see a "bug" of any kind, the first thing they do is head to the store to get some kind of poison to KILL IT.  It's just WAY too easy for anyone to get this stuff, and a lot of it is very potent, and probably much more persistent in the environment than is currently realized (or admitted).  Every time I'm in any hardware store, all I see are people with shopping carts full of poison, poison, POISON!!!  We might as well re-name these places "poison stores".  I've been warning people for nearly 40 years that such wide-scale application of all these man-made pesticides is NOT the answer, that it's NOT the direction we should be going, and that their use is going to continue to have more and more serious consequences.

 
My biggest worry would be . . . how do I explain this to a cop who sees me digging around a playground at 11pm at night.

 
Goliathus said:
If you're in the US, you can safely assume that ALL materials from public parks, playgrounds and such have been treated with pesticides and/or herbicides at some point, and probably repeatedly.  It's been my observation that in this country, the second that most people see a "bug" of any kind, the first thing they do is head to the store to get some kind of poison to KILL IT.  It's just WAY too easy for anyone to get this stuff, and a lot of it is very potent, and probably much more persistent in the environment than is currently realized (or admitted).  Every time I'm in any hardware store, all I see are people with shopping carts full of poison, poison, POISON!!!  We might as well re-name these places "poison stores".  I've been warning people for nearly 40 years that such wide-scale application of all these man-made pesticides is NOT the answer, that it's NOT the direction we should be going, and that their use is going to continue to have more and more serious consequences.
Click to expand...
My local “poison store” happens to be the only place I can find Traeger oak pellets. 

 
The Mantis Menagerie said:
My local “poison store” happens to be the only place I can find Traeger oak pellets. 
Click to expand...
Indeed, anywhere that you can buy grill pellets, you can almost certainly buy pesticide, too.  I can handle going into hardware stores just fine, but farm & feed supply stores are another matter - the chemical smell in those places is totally overwhelming to me.

 
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