Q. I have grubs in sections of my fescue lawn. They have
been a problem in the past and they are again this summer. How do you prevent
grubs from re-infesting a lawn each summer?
A. Make sure the brown areas you see is damage due to grubs
before you apply grub control products. Most brown spots on lawns during summer
months are irrigation or disease related, not from grubs. Usually grub damage starts
appearing early in the summer.
Brown
spots resulting from grub damage is probably the easiest to determine. In early
summer, grab a handful of grass from the edge of a suspicious brown spot and
lightly pull. If green grass is pulled up without roots on it, then your lawn
probably has grubs. YouTube videos will show infested grass rolling back “like
a carpet” but that’s only on sod forming grasses like Kentucky bluegrass. We
have mostly tall fescue in our lawns which is a “bunch grass”. That makes identifying
grub damage in our lawns different.
If you
are convinced that brown spots are due to grubs, then apply an insecticide for
grub control to lawns in late spring. If you want to get a jump on controlling
white grubs, apply the same insecticide to the lawn September through October.