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Turf Damaging Insects

Insects are not a common cause of residential lawn damage, but certain species can occasionally damage or kill turfgrass, and often, quite quickly.

Insect feeding can cause grass to turn yellow or brown, or die, especially if the grass is already stressed. Damage usually begins in scattered small patches, which may merge into large dead areas. There are two types of turf-grass damaging insects: those that feed above ground, and those that feed below the surface.

Surface Feeding Insects

Surface Feeding insects include Chinchbugs and Army Worms. These destructive insects are treated with our two summer applications to protect your lawn from damage.

Chinchbugs: Adult chinchbugs are about 1/4 of an inch long and black with white wings folded over their backs. The insect mates early in the season when the temperature reaches 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The female lays eggs on roots, stems, leaves, leaf sheaths or crevices in nodes and other protected places. Eggs are laid over a 2 to 3 week period, with one female laying as many as 500 eggs. Read more...

Army Worms: can quickly defoliate a lawn. An infected lawn can be defoliated in only 3 days as the insects search for new food sources. Read more...

Subsurface Feeding Insects

Subsurface Feeding insects are primarily grubs and sod webworms. There are many types of grubs that damage turf and we can control all of them with our Preventative Grub Control Application.

Grubs are actually the larval stage of many different beetles, including the Japanese beetle. The grub lives below ground and feeds on the roots of tender grass plants that soon kills the plant. They are most destructive mid-late summer, but the damage they cause may not show up until early fall and by then, it's too late.

If you walk across your lawn at dusk and observe small moths flying up, you're really seeing the sod webworm moth. These are the mature moths that are now laying a new batch of eggs. Watch for damage in about 10 to 14 days. This is when their eggs begin to hatch into caterpillars. These caterpillars chew off the grass blades close to the soil surface leaving brown stubble as damage.

Early August is typically when we see the heaviest damage, although sometimes damage is also heavy in June.