Mosquitos, Bag and Army Worms – OH MY!

It has come to our attention that some discussions are incredibly disgusting, but will that stop us? NO! Our current discussion is about grubs and worms that morph into beetles and bugs. EWWW!

Wait, too disgusting? Hold your head up and look at your screen from an angle. Some people claim that filtering this subject (especially pictures) through their fingers, as you do in horror movies with lots of gore, will help tolerate the whole mess. Very well, fingers at the ready!

Your lawn can look picture perfect one day, emerald green rolling across your field of vision, tempting your feet and toes to take a walk. You will not want to take that walk when you realize what lurks beneath.

Grubs

Let’s get this over quickly! Grubs are the larval stage (worm stage) of several types of beetles. Give your landscaping  team at Divine Lawns a call if you suspect there are grubs. The grubs are also especially damaging to lawns and other grassy areas.

They love to feast on your grass roots. Because the roots of many lawns have become intertwined, this activity will cause large patches of lawn to become brown. That patch is dead; let’s face it. Your consultant will pull it out. The roots are dead, making it easy to pull up the brown patches.

Try not to become alarmed or sick when you see these monstrous curls of pale, disgusting wormy flesh. Now the only thing to do is to treat the entire lawn with a grub control program.

What happens if you don’t treat for grubs and other pests? See the brown patches? Soon, your whole lawn could look that way. A herd of them can decimate an entire field of grass overnight. They will also attract other animals, such as raccoons, moles, and rats, which think of your grubs as gourmet dining. Whether they mean to harm or not, they can rip your lawn apart in their enthusiasm.

Chinch Bugs

Chinch bug infestations can be a little tricky to spot. The bugs are tiny; the damage looks like ‘normal” damage to a lawn after a summer drought. Damage occurs in yellow patches with no seeming pattern.

The bugs themselves are tiny and black. Some have red or bright orange stripes. Others are smaller with white wings.

To find out if the chinch bugs are causing damage to your lawn, try putting a handful of dirt into a container and mixing it with water from the area that’s been damaged. The bugs will rise to the top, but remember, they are very small. You might need a magnifying glass to see them. Chinch bugs cause damage by biting into the grass blades and sucking out the nutrients and moisture. This is why an infestation looks a lot like a drought.

Armyworms

Armyworms is the name of the species in the larval stage. Once they mutate, they become Fall Armyworm Moths. This adult form is relatively harmless. However, the larvae will munch on any foliage and leave it looking ragged. Sometimes dust that looks like pollen dust will appear.

Take a look around any plants or turf that appears to have a ragged appearance to find the armyworm larvae. The fall armyworms are green with yellow and orange stripes. Full size worms are about two inches long and spend a lot of time munching your lawn and plants above ground. The adults are moths with gray markings and white under the wing. They can reach more than an inch in wingspan, a little larger than the standard gray moth.

Damage

In the grub stage or larval stage, grubs can cause significant damage to lawns and crops. They primarily eat roots, so the damaged patches turn brown quickly. If you pull up a sample of turf that’s turned brown and you see more than five of these grubs, you know your lawn is in trouble.

Remedies

While a range of applied pesticides might be able to wipe out most of these creatures, you might find that beneficial nematodes are especially helpful in getting rid of them.

Your landscape team might try various remedies, but most insecticides only kill the larvae, so you need a second application to kill the hatched eggs. Diatomaceous earth can do an excellent job of killing chinch bugs at any stage, including drying out the eggs. If an infestation has been identified, the best thing you can do is consult with a professional landscaping company such as Divine Lawns.