Grubs and Improved Landscapes Go Hand in Hand

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?

Grubs feeding and growing larger in the soil beneath a lawn. They will become "June bugs" in the 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.

White grub larva just before it will become a "June beetle".

            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.