An attractive lawn is an essential feature in your home landscape, yet maintaining it can be a challenging endeavor when pests and diseases strike. Learn to recognize signs of damage to your turf so you can take steps to prevent or treat pests before they cause irreparable harm to it.
Preventive Maintenance, Regular Lawn Care and Timely Treatment
Proper care, regular lawn maintenance practices and timely treatment can be key components in creating and maintaining a thick and healthy lawn, but no lawn is pest-proof. Grubs, caterpillars and chinch bugs as well as diseases like red thread, dollar spot and rust can quickly destroy grass to leave brown patches of sickly grass in their wake – an infestation can also occur as a result of drought, temperature swings or rainfall changes that disrupt normal grass growth patterns.
However, various other insects may also be found in your lawn that don’t require removal; such as rove beetles and blister beetles that act as natural decomposers without severely harming turfgrass. Robber flies, spider mites, flea beetles, ground nesting wasps, and ground nesting bees may all feed on turfgrass leaves and stems, providing important sources of nutrients.
In early spring, grasshoppers can quickly become an overwhelming problem for lawns when their larvae feed on young plant roots and weaken them significantly. Their larvae also feed on shoots left behind from existing plants, leaving behind stunted and ragged shoots that are difficult to pull up. Birds are drawn to these wormlike larvae and will attempt to feed upon them, further damaging your lawn. For effective larval control use products like Bayer Advanced Lawn Grub Control (Bayer Fungicide) or Scotts DiseaseEX(tm) Lawn Insect Killer.
White grubs, larvae of various scarab beetles such as the masked chafer and Japanese beetles, must also be controlled for effective lawn management. Their C-shaped larvae feed on grass roots just beneath the soil surface, weakening and killing grass rootlets as they dine on them. Sod webworms also pose a significant problem on bluegrass and bentgrass lawns that contain thick thatch layers; their baseball-sized patches of dead grass may feature dirt tubes which hold inch long caterpillars or pupae; control can usually be achieved using products such as Scotts(r) Grub killer with strict label instructions followed.
Leatherjackets, the larvae of crane flies (Daddy Long-Legs), cause similar damage as grubs in early spring. Their feeding habits harm your grass roots, leaving it weaker and easier to cut up or pull up than before, as well as feeding on woody plants such as roses and berry trees. Control is most effective with products like Bayer Advance Lawn Grub Control.
Other lawn diseases that may surface include snow mold, rust and brown patch. Irregular patches of withered, thinned grass form in circular patterns while its blades appear oily; orange-red spores cover blades while hitching rides on mowers, shoes and tools; this condition typically appears from early summer through fall and can be promoted by mild temperatures, high humidity levels and prolonged wet conditions as well as compacted soil, overfertilizing or too much shade contributing to its spread.