Insects: A little prevention and scouting can save your lawn

Insects: A little prevention and scouting can save your lawn

Lawns and Shrubs are home to many, many insects. Few of them are harmful, and many are even beneficial.

Healthy grass plants can tolerate some feeding by the harmful insects like grubs and chinch bugs. But when the number of pests reaches a certain level - called a threshold - the quality of your lawn can be hurt. The open spaces the pests create in turf can be ugly, and invaded by weeds.

Most pesticide applications made to home lawns aimed at killing insect pests are either unneeded or ineffective. To make sure that you need a pesticide, you must first “scout” for the pests to see if there are enough of them to justify the treatment. If you do treat, you need to make sure that you apply the right pesticide correctly and at the right time.

For example, as I’ve stated before, treatment for grubs isn’t justified unless there are more than 6- 10 grubs per square foot. Unless someone peels back the sod at several locations and checks to see how many larvae are feeding on grass roots, you won’t know if the pesticide is needed.

In spring, grubs are usually too mature to be controlled by most pesticides effectively. You may still get some control, but it requires the right product and watering it in well.

A better way is to selectively treat certain areas with lower active ingredient insect control products before certain problems pop up.

Imidiclopyrid (merit) is excellent lower active ingredient grub prevention when applied at the right time (summer in most parts) and watered in quickly. It saves the possibility of using a higher active insecticide later on that might not be so nice to the many beneficial insects and worms in your lawn.

If your don’t use Merit for prevention, then scout for grubs in late summer and early fall to determine if treatment is necessary while the grubs are still small enough to control. (If treatment is justified, mid August and September are usually the best times.) Because they feed below-ground, insecticides need to be watered in to get the product in the soil before sunlight has a chance to break down the material. This will make it less effective if it sits for a week, and allow the grubs another free week of rent in your lawn.

Similarly, scout for surface feeders (such as cutworms, sod webworms, chinch bugs and bluegrass billbugs) before treating.

Regardless of the pest, the best way to minimize damage is through prevention:

• Keep turf healthy through proper mowing, watering and fertilizing. Healthy turf will tolerate more pests.

• Plant the right grass for your location. Choose grasses that resist pests, such as endophytic varieties of perennial ryegrass, fine leaf and tall fescues. (Endophytes are beneficial fungi that live on the grass and discourage surface feeders.)

• Scout before you treat. If you use pesticides, treat when the pest is most vulnerable, and follow all directions carefully. To prevent water pollution, never apply pesticides when ground is frozen or saturated.

To prevent drift and volatilization (which
• Releases pesticides into the air), do not apply when temperatures are high or it is windy.

One of the other areas you might take a pro-active approach is around your foundation. Using a low active ingredient insect product like Talstar twice a year around the foundation will really help with the ants and other outdoor/indoor pests.

Talstar controls 75 pests (including termites, fleas, ticks & lawn damaging insects) and can even be used indoors as well as outdoors per the label.

Once again, a little intelligent low rate prevention can sometimes be better than blasting insect problems after they do their damage.

As always, read all insect and weed control labels and follow the label instructions.

For additional resources check www.elawnhelp.com

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How to treat grubs

I spoke a couple days ago about grubs and grub damage. After reading that, and you determine you actually have a grub problem (not just a few grubs), then it is time to do something about it. But what?

For the environmentalists amongst us, I will mention Milky Spore and
beneficial nematodes. Both are bio-controls of grubs. Neither should be used when a grub problem is present, because they won’t work to do much for your current grub problem.
If you are of the belief that you, under any circumstance, your customer will never allow use of an insecticide on a lawn insect problem, then maybe you could give it try. But only before the grub problem pops up. That’s when to use it.
They can be expensive and tedious to apply to the lawn, but you may get some benefit from it.

After saying all that, its time to take care of your grubs. If you have an existing grub problem, the best product in most situations is DYLOX 6.2 G. It’s sold in different forms, but most likely in a granular material in a 30 lb bag. For most grubs, it requires about 3#s per 1000 sq ft. always read your label and follow the correct label rate fro your situation. More is never better, and often times in Lawn care, it can even worsen a situation.

Once applied to the lawn, it must be watered in pretty well before too long. You do not want to let Dylox sit out in the sunlight because the sun will begin breakdown the active ingredient, thus making it less effective. You bought the product, and you should get the most out of it.
You also need to get it where the grubs are and that is in the soil, not on top of the lawn.

Late summer and early fall is when you will see new grub activity. You will want to treat the grub problem as early as possible because you don’t want to do it in spring time when they will be much harder to control as they mature.

After watering it in, the Dylox will be ingested by the grubs, and they will stop feeding immediately on the roots. They will not however just disappear. They stop doing the damage, but can take a while to fully die and decompose. You will see grubs in the area still or even animal damage from hungry skunks.
This doesn’t mean it isn’t working. It most likely is, but you can’t control the skunks and raccoons from digging around and eating the dying grubs. If damage has occurred you may renovate and seed the area.
There are other products labeled for grubs like Sevin, Grub-X, merit, Mach2 and so forth. Merit (imidocloprid) and mach 2 are prevention products, and are not effective on existing grubs.

Sevin is another broad spectrum insecticide that is labeled for grubs. I prefer Dylox, because SEVIN needs heavy irrigation or else it gets hung up in the thatch layer and never gets to the grubs. Sevin also can harm earthworms and other beneficial organisms. Dylox doesn’t exhibit these same characteristics and moves throughout the soil fast. Dylox doesn’t have much residual; it only treats what is active.

One BIG pet peeve of mine is retail stores and GRUB-X. Not either one really, but the marketing that is employed. Homeowner’s walk into a garden center or big box retailer looking for something to control the grubs eating the lawn. Right out in front of the aisle is a BIG display of shiny black and red bags with a picture of a grub on it. It says GRUB-X, it’s made by SCOTTS, and so it must be good. They spend 25 bucks for the 5000 sq ft bag, apply it and what happens? Nothing most likely. Why? Because Grub-X is a prevention product and needs to be applied at a certain time before the grubs are eating your lawn. Simply put, Scotts and retailers are putting one over on you as a homeowner. The product itself as a prevention (imidocloprid or Merit) is a great product, but only when used properly. Treating your hungry grubs is not using it properly.
For a homeowner this can mean.

1. Waste of time
2. Waste of money
3. Grubs keep creating more damage
4. Homeowner get frustrated
5. Homeowner buys more Grub control, and seed to repair the area

Lots of waste in there!

My Lawn has grubs !

My Lawn has grubs!

A short post about grubs. More info later. It’s a popular topic.

If you are in your yard and see a grub or 2, you probably don’t have grubs.

You may even see a couple in the lawn, but it is not worth treating at this point. Really.

Why waste your money and apply insecticides when you don’t have to?

You need to apply grub killer when you have grub infestations. Grub infestations kill turf. Too many grubs chewing up your roots and the grass can’t get the water and nutrients it needs, so it turns brown.

Signs to look for

1. Actual grubs. Many of them in one area Healthy turf can probably sustain about 5-6 grubs easily in a sq ft area. more than that, and You need to treat
2. Brown turf that is very loose. Rips up easily because there are no roots. The turf may not always be brown either. It will always lift up like a rug on a floor or a cheap toupee.
3. Heavy Bird activity in the lawn in a concentrated area. Birds love those little grubbies, and seeing a lot of them ought to prompt investigation
4. Skunk or raccoon damage. They eat grubs too, and can do as much damage as the birds and grubs digging around for them.
5. Japanese beetle and other beetle activity. Most of this activity takes place during the summer. These are the very critters laying eggs in your lawn. These eggs become grubs and eat your lawn later. However you decide to attack the beetles, please do not use those beetle traps in your yard. Those traps attract beetles to your yard. Before (and IF) the find their way into the traps, they are laying eggs throughout the lawn. Be a nice neighbor and give those traps to the neighbor you don’t like 4 houses down.

Late summer /Early fall & spring is the time of year for grubs, so keep an eye out. Tomorrow, how and what to use to treat them.
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