Lawn Pest Control

Insect damage in turf gets blamed on drought about half the time, because from the driveway it looks the same. The difference is that a drought-stressed lawn greens back up after a good rain and a lawn with grubs feeding under it does not.

Grubs are a timing problem more than a product problem. Preventive materials go down in late spring and early summer, ahead of egg hatch, and hold through the season. By September the larvae are large and actively feeding, and that same preventive is the wrong choice: it takes a curative product watered in, and at that point you are repairing damage instead of avoiding it. The test is simple enough to do yourself: cut a one-foot square of turf, peel it back like carpet and count. Under about five or six grubs per square foot in otherwise healthy turf is not worth treating.

Armyworms are the other one that costs people a lawn outright. In a bad August they arrive as a front and can take an acre of Bermuda down to stems in two or three days, faster than any spray schedule can react to, which is why the answer is scouting on every visit and treating the day we find them. A soapy-water flush poured over a suspicious patch brings them to the surface in a couple of minutes.

The rest is more routine. Chinch bugs and two-lined spittlebugs feed down at the soil line in hot, dry turf. Mole crickets tunnel and do the most damage on sandier ground. Fire ants are the one thing in this business we can put the word guarantee next to: a two-application program, spring and fall, backed by the product manufacturer. If fire ants come back between applications, the retreatment is covered. Fleas and ticks come down to treating shade, leaf litter and the edge where the yard meets the woods, because that is where they live, not out in the open sunny turf where nobody would mind them anyway.

What is included

• Preventive grub treatment inside the hatch window, curative where damage is already down
• Armyworm scouting on every visit through late summer
• Damage diagnosed before anything is applied: drought, disease and grubs look alike from the curb
• Fire ant control guaranteed: two applications a year, spring and fall, backed by the manufacturer
• Flea and tick work concentrated in harborage and along the wood line
• Treatment at threshold, so we are not spraying turf that does not need it

Serving your area

We run lawn pest control across Northwest Georgia and East Alabama out of our Rome office, on the same clay and the same climate everywhere on this list, so the timing that works on one of these lawns works on the next one.