Started clearing out my pots

Today is a lovely sunny day, so I decided to make a start on clearing out my pots for my winter veggies - I was supposed to do this last weekend, but was not feeling great so it was put on hold.

Anyway, it has turned out a much bigger job than I had anticipated - I thought that once I had pulled out the pole beans and tomatoes and marigolds, I thought that it would go quite quickly from there.
I was wrong.

My idea of replenishing the soil with nice organic compost, bonemeal and a top up of new soil was brought to a halt as I pulled out the old plants -yes you have guessed it -GRUBS!!

Oh how I hate these little critters - apart from the fact that they look disgusting, they really do play havoc to plant roots.

As I do not have a sieve, the job ahead of me was back breaking and extremely time consuming as I had to do it all by hand with my trowel - turning the soil over and over and picking out these beastlies - ugh!
I also found numerous cocoons that had not yet opened to release the grubs.

The one good thing that consoled me was that the robin that frequents the garden will enjoy all these tasty morsels that I threw downstairs.
At this stage - mid day, - I have been at it more most of the morning, I have only managed to clear three pots as there were so many grubs in the soil.
At a rough estimate, I would say that I have removed about close on a hundred grubs - one wonders how my plants did so well with these ghastly critters.

While I was removing them, I was trying to think of a way to prevent the beetles from getting into the soil in the first place - it is these beetles that become the grubs.
Anyway, I thought that once the plants were big enough, perhaps I should place some sort of fine plastic mesh around the plants and see if that would help.
I know there are products that can be used to kill them, but I like to garden organically so do not use these.

The job is not done yet with the pot clearing, but it is too hot outside at present so I will carry on later.