Recently, at a Greening Australia planting project, a suspicious larval grub was found alive inside a bamboo stake. After some conversations with Sure Gro (who import them from China) & then AQIS (Quarantine) the bug was sent in to be analysed. Following the analysis, AQIS rang Greening Australia to inform them that the bug is foreign and that they are doing a recall on the batch due to failed fumigation. We’re talking about possibly hundreds of thousands of stakes, most of which are in the ground for various Landcare projects, all over East Gippsland, but some that may have ended up for sale in garden centres.
This is an emerging issue to keep on eye on. If you have used or stocked Sure Gro bamboo stakes recently you may need to chase down the batch number. We will provide more information, and batch numbers as they come to hand.