How to Treat Your Lawn for Grubs
You spend literally thousands of dollars just to have a healthy, green lawn only to find it wither away before your eyes. You tried to every best possible ways to irrigate, aerate and fertilize it to no avail. Chances are, your lawn has grub infestation.
Grubs are larvae of scarab beetles that feed on your lawn’s roots. This makes the grass wither as if subjected to a long drought making patches in your once evergreen lawn. This article, however, does not give you comprehensive methods in protecting and curing your lawn from grubs. These are the basics in lawn care and lawn pest control.
Step 1. You must understand that having grubs in lawn is normal for most yard. Before you implement grub-removal program, you must determine the extent of your lawn’s grub infestation. You do this by carefully cutting a 6” X 6” sample turf in your lawn. Cut as many sample from different part of the lawn. If the sample turf contains 2-3 lawn grubs per sample, your lawn needs treatments. You can replace the turf after inspecting it. Step 2. Know the species of grubs that infest your lawn. Identification of beetle species help determines the program you implement. There are three common beetle species that infests lawns: the June beetle, the European Chafer and the Japanese beetle.
Step 3. Should your lawn really warrant a treatment, choosing the right time of application is crucial. Grubs have three-year cycle before they pupate and turn into adult beetles. Once they are hatched in spring, they start feeding on roots of plants and other decaying matter. During the fall, they start digging deeper into the soil and remain there all winter. As the soil starts to warm up in the spring, they return to the surface with a voracious appetite. The second year of their life-cycle is the most destructive part of their life-cycle. Your lawn is filled with grubs that are in various stage of their life-cycle. Treating therefore in spring is somehow less effective since the larger grubs have done their spring feeding and are difficult to kill. Experts advise that during spring, lawns should be overseeded instead on damaged areas while waiting for fall where it is the best time to apply the pesticide.
Step # 4. Ask you salesman for the right kind of pesticide to apply. Since there are no permanent products that remain in the shelf for a long time, it is expected that you will be introduced to new ones every year. Grub insecticides change their formulation every now and then.