Sod Webworms
With the rain, treat for insects. Sod webworms like to feed at night and on
cloudy overcast days. Obviously they
have been chowing down the last month or two!
They will feed on all types of grass (Centipede, St. Augustine, Zoysia, Bermuda,
Bahia).
If you have a lot of moths that fly a zigzag pattern then quickly sit
back down, chances are you have an adult sod webworm laying eggs in your
grass. The damage that the sod webworm
does looks like someone scalped an area of the grass with a very dull mower
blade. The grass is very ragged looking
and you can see where the larva chewed on the grass. If you look in the thatch area, you can see
the feces and sometimes the worm itself.
Sod webworms are easily controlled with Bifen or Sevin.
Fire ants
With all the rain, the fire ants have come back with a
vengeance! If you put out bait in the
spring, it is probably a good time to apply another application. Baiting large areas (your entire property),
is a very effective way to control fire ants and very inexpensive. Using contact killers like Sevin or Bifen are
also best used over a large area. Most
of the time mound treating simply chases the ant from one area to another.
Mole crickets
Mole crickets are young adults with their wings and are up
near the surface tunneling ferociously!
Scout your yard for potential damage and treat as needed. You can scout your yard by using soap flush
(2 oz. of liquid dish detergent in a 5 gallon bucket of water, spread over a 2
ft by 2 ft area). Wait 5 minutes to see
what comes up. To control these pests,
use Mole Cricket Bait, Intice perimeter bait (NOP approved, LEED Tier 3), or Sevin.
Large Patch (the disease formerly known as Brown Patch)
With all the rain and the cool weather, Large Patch has
exploded! Cleary’s and Disarm provide a
good one-two punch. If you know the areas that get brown patch, we get great
reports about Neptune Harvest’s Crab Shell, Nature’s Blend, and Cotton Burr
Compost suppressing the disease in areas that it has been perennial problem.
If you are planning on transplanting a tree this fall, now
is the time to root prune. For root
pruning trees, a good rule of thumb is for every inch in diameter of tree, you
want twelve inches of root ball.
Sometimes this is not practical because you are usually transplanting an
over-crowded tree or a tree located too close to a house or sidewalk. At this point outline the biggest ball you
can possibly move and just dig straight down severing the roots without
actually removing the soil. Come back in
a month and dig away from the area that you severed leaving your tree in a
little moat. Spray the tree with
transfilm (anti-transparent) and remove the tree. Use DieHard Transplant in the
new hole.
Spray horticulture and neem oils now to kill over-wintering
insects, this will put you ahead of the insect game in the spring.
When buying gas for your lawn mower, be sure use ethanol
free gas and to include a gas stabilizer to help prevent your carburetor from
getting varnished over the winter.
