When is the best time of the year to treat your lawn for grubs?
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Answers:
From April through August. Go to your local Hardware store and get a bag of GRUBEX. Follow the directions and say go by the those horrible, horrible moles.
You can treat it anytime during the year but the best time is in the early spring. The best thing to do is to order microscopic nematodes through either a lawn and garden website or your local nursery. The nematodes usually have to be dispensed early spring but they eat only grub worms. Relatively cheap and completely natural.
Depends on the grub species. Ideally you want to treat them about 2 months (plus/minus) after egg laying. This way the grub is in its early instars are more susceptible to insecticides....or even the nematodes someone mentioned above. Waiting until the grubs are much larger or even moving into the pupal stage requires far more pesticide. Pupal stage, might as well forget pesticides. Also grubs may be one "season" life cycle or more, depends on species.
For the two main species we have here, late August pesticide applications are idea. Waiting until the grubs go down deep for the winter and come back up in the spring allows them to become that much larger. People see the damage in the spring so they want to kill the ?? things when actually the damage began the previous fall. Killing them earlier would prevent the damage.
Contact your Extension Service to determine what type of grubs are in your lawns and the ideal time to treat.
Only about ten percent of the grubs you see are "bad" grubs. The rest help decompose organic matter and aerate your soil, just like earthworms. Beneficial nematodes are great for helping to control any critter who has a life cycle in the soil. This includes fire ants, fleas, "bad" grubs... Beneficial nematodes do not harm earthworms or any of the "good" critters in the soil. Feed the soil and the soil will feed your plants. Plants are living things. To be healthy, they need:
* to be adapted or native plants
* growing in the proper conditions (light, water, soil type)
* in living soil, soil that is teeming with earthworms and full of life
Treating grubs depends a lot on what grub you have. June beetle? Japanese Beetle? Whatever . . . . The best time to kill grubs is right after they are born. After they are born they tend to come up closest to the soil, and the fact that they are babies, they are most vulnerable to pesticide. The older they get, the bigger they get, and the more they can eat pesticides without dying. So . . figure out what beetle you have either by the adult, or pull the grub up and look at the raster (the butt) and identify the grub by the hair pattern on the butt. Then look up the life cycle for that grub, and proceed accordingly.
Also be aware of where you live, Japanese beetle grubs are born in North Carolina a full month before they are born in Maine. A web search for your state's extension service would also be helpful.
So . . giving an exact time is impossible, unless you know what grub and where you are living. But I hope these guidelines help.
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