Johannes

I don’t have an answer for you, but we had the wet leading through until last winter/spring cause us problems that we have not seen before. The soil remained wet for too long creating a lot of root issues. This may have set up a cascading effect whereby the slaters were able to proliferate, in your situation.

In the 12 months to July ’22 our soil carbon levels dropped 30%. In the following 12 months after it had dried out the C came back up over 30%. There has been little stability.

In the orchard we have a massive population of slaters feeding on the dead plant material. We promote plant growth under the trees, and slash from time to time. No herbicides. There is always plenty of dead material there for them. Perhaps with the drought leading into the wetter years your “litter” layer had become depleted, with things getting out of balance. I actually love seeing the slaters there. At times of the year you can see a lot of fine, broken down material that I put down to their activity.