SEPTEMBER IS THE TIME TO CONTROL WHITE GRUB WORMS IN THE LAWN
If you had Japanese Beetles eating on your plants this summer, then you will have white grub worms in your lawn this fall and next spring. Now is the best time to control the white grub population in your lawn. What you do now, you then want to repeat in early spring when we start to warm up. There is so much confusion about white grub worm control. Most homeowners are advised to apply a grub control product in the spring. But now is the best time. A lot of the damage done to the lawn now isn’t visible until the following spring.
The first step is to understand the life cycle of the Japanese Beetle. The female Japanese Beetle will lay her eggs in your lawn. She won’t lay her eggs in the shade since soil temperatures are too low to keep the eggs alive. Each female beetle is capable of laying a couple of hundred eggs. These eggs will all hatch within four days after they are laid. No grubs are hatching in the spring. None. They ALL hatch in late August and September.
After the grubs emerge from their eggs, they must eat, and what they eat are the roots of your lawn. They eat and eat and eat and eat until they are the size that you find in the spring.
As you get farther into fall, our soil temperature begins to drop. The grub will burrow down deep in your soil in order to avoid being frozen over winter. Naturally, there is nothing for them to eat down deep in the soil so they survive on all that body fat they put on by eating your grass roots.
STEP TO CONTROL GRUB WORMS IN THE FALL
Here we are in September. Let’s kill these white grub worms before they do too much damage to the lawn and while they are near the surface of the soil. A sure sign of grub damage is seeing dead patches of lawn. Usually, when you see these patches and you tug on the patch it will lift up easily because there are no roots to anchor the turf. And, sometimes by doing so it will expose the grub worms as evidence of the cause.
What’s the best product(s) to use for killing the grubs? In my opinion it will be one of two products: Either the chemical imidacloprid which is in the Bonide Grub Control or use the biological control (my choice) non chemical MILKY SPORE.
Once the grub killing product is applied you want to water it in. The water will activate the chemical. Another note: applying a grub killing insecticide does not interfere with you wanting to seed or overseed your lawn or applying your fall fertilizer to the lawn.
Killing the grubs will reduce Japanese Beetles next summer and reduce the damage done on your plants by the beetle.
Another thing to keep in mind. These products mentioned above do not harm our earthworm population.