Unwelcome Guests: The Lawn Pests Crashing Your Yard
How dare they! No one wants an ugly or unhealthy lawn, especially one that’s riddled with unwanted pests. Luckily, with the right treatment and regular attention, your lawn can bounce back to being that fun filled place to enjoy!
First things first, the best way to prevent lawn pests is to look after your lawn. This includes regular mowing, adequate deep watering over dry periods and fertilising every season to promote a healthy, robust lawn that can outcompete and withstand pests and diseases. Mother Nature also works with you to support your lawn so encourage natural predators like birds and beneficial insects to control populations of pests in your lawn and garden.
When Mother Nature has done what she could, then it’s time to get your game on. Grubs, ants and other lawn pests are usually at their most active as the soil starts to warm in early to mid-Spring and again towards late Summer or early Autumn, when weather conditions are mild rather than extreme. If you’re prone to pests, getting an edge on them by using Scotts Lawn Builder Grub + Insect at the start of ‘grub season’, usually when the soil starts to warm around mid-September and especially after heavy rains. A second treatment in November may be needed in years when grubs are particularly bad. Army worm, Cut worm, Billbug amongst others won’t be causing you lawn problems!
If this is a new problem for your lawn, dealing with particularly Lawn Grubs is a little tricky. Long before evidence of their presence becomes visible, the eggs of many lawn pests are hatching either in the soil or deep down in the grass, and their larvae are munching away on the roots of the grass. Those sneeky little critters! Often the first signs you’ll see are brown or dead patches in the lawn, starting off quite small but expanding rapidly as the grubs grow and their appetites get bigger.
By this stage, unfortunately, the damage has already been done for this year, but don’t give up! Controlling the pests now will interrupt their lifecycles and prevent them maturing to adult moths and beetles and producing future generations, in even larger numbers.
Be on alert and you will give your lawn the best chance of recovery with Scotts Lawn Builder Grub + Insect Slow Release Lawn Fertiliser . Scotts Lawn Builder will kill the most common grub and insect pests found in lawns, while feeding and greening the lawn at the same time.
