How To Identify And Prevent Spring Lawn Pests

Posted on April 18th, 2019

A lush, healthy lawn is a delightful thing. It looks good, feels good, and it plays a key role in bringing your landscape together, giving your home that pristine look. Unfortunately, it’s around this time each year where your lawn can play victim to lawn pests, who can quickly turn your grass from lush and green, to brown and sickly.

Here are some common lawn pests you may see this spring, and how you can identify and prevent them from causing further damage to your lawn.

Lawn Grubs

Lawn grubs can quickly wreak havoc on your lawn if they’re not caught early. The easiest way to identify them is by the damage they cause. Here are three things that aid lawn grub in identification:

• If you find spotty patches of dead or dying grass throughout your lawn, this is one of the early signs of an infestation.
• If those patches of grass can be easily pulled up from the soil, like rolling carpet, this is a telltale sign that you have an infestation. This is caused by the grubs chewing through the grass roots, separating the grass from the soil.
• If you’re walking on your lawn and you feel like the grass is “spongy”, it’s another early sign of a possible infestation.

If you find one of these signs, or if you see the grubs yourself, you will want to contact the professionals at Turf Unlimited right away, so grub control methods can be put in place sooner rather than later.

Chinch Bugs

Chinch bugs are nutrient sucking pests that cause damage to your lawn by sucking the nutrients out of the grass blades and root systems. The damage chinch bugs cause is often confused with drought because they suck moisture from the grass, then insert a poison, which disrupts the flow of water within the grass, causing it to dry out and die.

As soon as you’ve identified a chinch bug infestation, you’re going to want to act quickly because these pests mature fast. The best way to eliminate and prevent them from returning is by applying an insecticide or contacting the professionals at Turf Unlimited.

Billbugs

The threat billbugs present to your lawn is not a result of the adults, but the larvae, which feed on your grass’ roots. The larvae look similar to c-shaped grubs but they have an orange coloring and a dark orange head. If you have dead spots throughout your lawn, you will want to go and look for billbug larvae on the outside of the affected areas. They also leave behind frass (which looks similar to sawdust) where they have been feeding, which is another giveaway of an infestation.

Billbugs are the result of poor lawn maintenance. The best way to fight these lawn pests is to aerate, overseed, and fertilize your lawn to make it healthy and strong. Ultimately allowing it to work as a natural defense from not just lawn pests, but other spring lawn threats as well.

If lawn pests are wreaking havoc on your lawn this spring, give the professionals at Turf Unlimited a call at (888) 649-9919. As part of our 5-step conventional fertilization program, we will provide your lawn with what it needs to protect against the damages caused by lawn pests. Contact us today for your free estimate. We can help! We guarantee it!