Finding Grubs In Your Lawn This Spring?

The weather is starting to turn here around Crown Point and Lake County and that can only mean one thing ya’ll – time to get out and start working in the lawn and garden again!

Chances are that while you are out digging around and checking out your lawn over the next few days or weeks, you’ll find a few grub worms.

“I found grubs in my lawn this spring…”

“Oh, no,” you gasp… “do I need to rush out and get something to kill them NOW??”

The answer is “NO!”

If you will trust what I am telling you here: I can save you some money, time and wasted pesticides.

Grub Worm Life Cycle

Grub worms are the larvae of the June Bug or Japanese Beetle. June bugs fly around through, of course, the month of June… but also into July and early August. When they fly around, they eat and mate! (whadda life!)

After mating, they lay eggs in lawns (especially green, well irrigated lawns). Those eggs develop into the larvae, also known as a grubworm.

Grubs feed voraciously on grass roots all the way into the fall, causing dead patches that begin to show in later September and October.

We had a very dry fall time in 2010 so many of you guys didn’t see your lawns green up in the cooler months like you might normally expect. That means that if you did have some grubs in there doing damage, you may not have seen it because the lawn was brown and dormant anyway.

The good news is, however, that those grubs you find now, in the spring of 2011, are just leftovers from last year and they are not gonna do anymore damage.

You see, late last fall, those grubs burrowed down deep to hibernate over the frozen months. Now that it is warming up, they are coming to the surface, ready to emerge in May/June as adults and start the process all over again. Any small amount of munching they do waiting to fly out will NOT be enough to harm your grass any further.

Lawns grow vigorously in Spring anyway and can grow right through any minor munching these guys do. If you want to do anything, you should put down some grass seed in the areas that didn’t recover after winter.

Trust me, you should not apply grub worm insect controls in spring… it’s a waste! It is best to wait until June and apply a quality grub worm preventative application for this season’s crop of fresh munching grub worms! Most grub controls have a 70-90 day residual, so anything you put down now will be warn off by late June and need to be applied again anyway.

In short: don’t apply grub worm insect products in the spring: ever!

Your questions are welcome…