DIY How to kill grub worms. brown spots grass pulling out. How to treat grubs. My lawn has grubs

[Music] thanks for tuning in guys the paestum on did you and this is what's wrong with my mod now we get calls every so often that's saying that they have a lawn that looks like this and they want a lawn that looks like this so the point of the series is to bring you through my tips and tricks for diagnosing and I'm gonna give you all those steps to stay tuned in now it's kind of funny because this lawn behind us we don't service and then all of a sudden you see that that little line there and now we get into the lawn that we service it's amazing what a little micronutrients and macronutrients do and a good watering plan now even though you can have everything picture-perfect it doesn't mean that you're not going to have pockets of problems so on this episode we got a call from a customer who was really happy with their lawn rooms looking really good and then it started changing there the colors are just changed and things aren't looking good and it obviously looks sick so let's go check it out alright guys so let's walk it out we can see that we've got some issues coming around the corner and all of a sudden everything looks really nice healthy and happy getting extremely good color colors nice and rich the only thing that's missing is a laundry machine stripe this up everything's looking the way that I wanted to again we've got one little spot that's brown here and there and then we have the neighbor's lawn this is what I love to see right when we put together an action plan that's working this side here looks nice and dingy this side here looks nice and healthy and that's going to happen when one person is treating their lawn and the other isn't coming around this corner you can see everything looks really happy we've got some issues going around the going around the trampoline here and then all of a sudden it goes straight green healthy and happy now we've got a few weird things going on this discolor here but again we're just talking about pattern and then all of a sudden boom we had so much dead grass that called me in a panic said everything was coming out like sheets sheets of pizza like they literally touch it and fall out in their hand now this area is kind of a special special place it's a it's a ravine for water runoff so far I think it's safe to say that the overall pattern is isolated into chunks of different problems so we are gonna do overall diagnosed in the entire lawn to see if we need to do preventive measures as well as curative measures we're really gonna focus on these individual areas but let's get started let's check it out so our next step in the process or step number two is checking out color color is going to be an indicator some of these colors are gonna be lack of water some of them are gonna be nutrient and deficiencies and others could be burning so our first area you can see the shape and this this falls under step number one under pattern we also look at shapes you can see that it's got kind of a kind of round edges with sporadic corners now this is a common indication of drought step number two is identifying the color now this color is also brown which also insinuates lack of water now you can see that the self-repairing kentucky bluegrass is starting to shoot rhizomes which tells me it more than likely had a history of drought problems now I don't want to just come to this conclusion so we're gonna take a moment and we're gonna grab the soil probe and also check the water saturation as well as checking doing a thatch test and this is going to be an important part to tell now when we're doing the thatch tests right before the thatch test I like to tug on the grass to see if we're if we have any turf insects present so I like to check the edges and as you can see it's all tight so we can safely assume no insect problems step number I'm going to use Miami soil probe which I'm pretty happy with and check for watering now a couple of things about this is we're pulling the soil probe but you can see these top layers are extremely dry and crumbly the bottom layers at this point have water now that normally would bother me but looking at this we've got a sandy kind of top layer and then it turns to a sandy loam these bottom layers are gonna hold more water but I think it is safe to say the root zones dead and this has suffered a lot of drought I'm still going to take a thatch test to see if the fertilizer is or is not penetrating so the one thing that I'm learning and we're kind of moving fast today guys and you might want to check out some of my other videos that this is going to fast but you can see shallow roots this is a little crazy to have roots sitting on top which kind of makes me wonder if we're dealing with the shallow root problem throughout the entire lawn now part of the thatch test I actually like to look into see what we're dealing with and looking in here I can really see that the the layers of the roots are extremely shallow I mean this is my my layer of roots right here I mean it's it's dirt right here so we are dealing with shallow root issues so we need to put together a game plan for that so safe to say spot number one we're definitely dealing with sprinkler coverage issues the water is not hitting right and therefore the lawn isn't growing right we also discovered that we have shallow root problems so I'm going to hit another couple of these spots see if it's consistent throughout but let's check spot number two all right guys so another random spot now this this pattern is commonly confusing because of the lack of the pattern and kind of the pitted out areas this could be anything between turf insects all the way to just drought now one thing I like to look at is color and this has a brown color to it common with water but again you want to go through each individual steps so step number one we look at pattern step number two we look at color the pattern and color tell me that I'm dealing with a drought additional insects the shape is also giving me the exact same idea as well step number three is going to be our pull test on this just to see if we're dealing with turf insects and everything appears to be intact the way that it needs to be step number four again I'm gonna do a soil probe now one thing about the soil probe that you guys need to understand at home is you want to start with a really really green area nearby just to see what it commonly would be now I'm pulling some pretty deep plugs here about six to eight inches the soil here is really interesting because we go from having kind of a sand to a sandy loam all halfway through here all the way down to clay which is pretty crazy now the one thing that I'm noticing though is I'm not getting any roots that are deep so we know we've got an overall health issue throughout the lawn now looking at it you know some of these like here I just pulled the second plug and I've got roots but it they're not really thick they're not really long and there is the majority of my root right there that's only going down four inches instead of twelve so I know we have an overall issue of health through the lawn going to the spots that are that are here you can kind of see again we've got that really weird clay layer we've got some topical roots going on but for the most part they've given up it appears that these areas are really old and I think we can safely say water management is an issue even though this is wet it's got so much sand in it chances are it wasn't getting water at the time my guess is now the watering has been fixed but if I were to guess shallow roots is usually an indication somebody's been daily watering now moving on to the thatch test I want to do that test on the inside and outside layer removing some of this excess thatch is also going to help but as you can see I'm just pulling roots and again when you start pulling roots like this we know that we have a shallow root issue what check this out crazy mr. grub what are the chances and that is why we do a thatch test and a pull test guys so we know that part of these damages are grub related you can see this little guy kind of squirming and look he's got friends and this happens a lot now what I need to do is to put down a different game plan to ensure that we can get rid of these guys now grub season in this area this is pretty late for grub season usually by the mid to end of August we're out of grub season so I'm guessing that the climate here is different than even a city over staying a little bit warmer later and colder later as well but these guys are creepy if you've ever seen these up front they don't really bite but great for fishing but they are creepy creepy little dudes got that big Copperhead on them and these actually come from a bill bug who's lays the eggs typically at the end of May and digging even deeper there's number three so I think it's safe to say we are going to have to do a curative insecticide but guys this is exactly why we go through all these steps it would have been really easy for me to come to the conclusion that this is just a watering problem it's crazy how things can change typical grub damages would have been almost twenty thirty days ago and here we are almost to September finding issues now it's not uncommon but this is why we go through all these steps now my next goal is is just because everything is green doesn't mean it's not susceptible to grubs at this point now do you find that you can limit your chances of corrupt damages by having deeper roots healthier grass and keeping a thinner thatch layer a lot of times grubs will come in because the grass is in a weakened state it's not always the case but it's always best to have a nice healthy lawn to kind of throw it off weeds and pests now as we walk to the next spot which is spot number three I'm just going to do a random poll test through the line we want to make sure that we do this to ensure that we don't have any other issues with grubs just because at this point it looks nice and healthy and green doesn't mean that we're not going to have some potential pockets of problems so it's really important that you guys don't stop doing this throughout the entire lawn now it really doesn't take that long and I mean what we're 15 20 seconds walking over the course of the thousand square feet just taking random plugs now another issue I want to talk to you guys about guys this is not mulch this is dead grass and it looks like this person is actually not bagging their clippings but they're also not following the mulching rules too if you're truly mulching you won't find that dead grass now the reason why I'm even talking about is dead grass is because sod web worms and a lot of your turf insects they don't care about the living grass they care about the dead grass they'll actually go through the top or the crown of the grass and eat the dead and caused damages well here we are two spot number three now you've used the hum I'm hoping at this point you guys tried to jump to the conclusion on what I'm about to say now a lot of these issues you can actually figure out just by a simple picture this one's a little bit trickier than most but I'm still going to walk you through it step number one we're looking for overall pattern again this has another one of those weird patterns it's it's kind of sporadic which can indicate bug activity or previous drought issues when we get these pitted areas like we do where it just looks like dots on a leopard usually tells me it has a history of drought problems the other thing that I want to look at is color this has a brown color to it which many of you guys know at this point is either going to be insect or pest related but the thing that's got me puzzled on this one is we've got that pockets of green right before so that could mean that they have a history of drought stress and now that they fix the water coverage now it's been repaired the self-repairing rhizomes of the Kentucky bluegrass are doing what they do best and that's pushing rhizomes to form new blade growth next up we want to do that poll test again we're underwater saturation tests and we want to check the thatch layers again so let's just start with the watering so this area is a hundred percent sand and it feels like we've got about eighty percent of the water that we'd like I really think because of the color that they have they've been daily watering I'd like to see that every other day now sometimes that can be tricky with sand you might not be able to get down to a flood irrigation once to two times a week and I'm okay with that but daily watering promotes shallow roots so we definitely don't want to do that but it looks like they have decent root growth in this area I'm seeing roots you know six to eight inches down also not uncommon with sandy soils moving on to the fast test I want to pull right outside the region and as you can see more shallow roots and this is a big issue here and again holy cow I've been pulling doing pull tests throughout this whole thing and what did we find again more grubs and again guys they're going to attack the weakened grass before they attack the live grass so this is not shocking now I think I've discovered why we have these random patterns as you can see here we've got these holes now these holes about the size of a golf ball they're going around this trampoline and in our area of Utah we get a little critter called a vole it's a cross between a mouse and a gopher now these will create these tracks as you can see here they create these tracks they need to be filled back in with sand but I think that is pretty much summing up all these weird little track marks now sometimes you can put enough phosphorus and enough macronutrients for some growth but the problem is they dig that dirt out and cause some issues so spot number three I think we can safely say we've got issues with grubs history of drought and voles we got some lawn drama guys so what I want to do at this point is do a thatch test through the rest of the lawn just to make sure that we're not dealing with more grubs I think it's safe to say we've got shallow roots to this whole lawn and that's primary causation right now we don't have a thatch layer that's thick enough and dense enough through the soil layer it's all sitting as a crown layer on top of the soil and that's causation so here's the good news good news is no more grubs bad news is the roots are so shallow it's kind of ridiculous like it literally just pulls up like sheets even without the bugs the good news is the the crown layer is really thick so it's warding off weeds as you can see I mean the colors Dees I mean look at the color between the neighbors in them but at the same time guys shallow roots it just causes a lot of problems so our last spot the the customer panicked and this is common out here they started pulling it up and it just came up like sheets of pizza guys I don't recommend doing this you could do macronutrients at 3/4 pound of nitrogen and a ton of potassium and some of the graphs will come back but in this instance they wanted a quick fix they're most likely gonna resaw this area but let me show you something here real quick so I'm gonna do a little pull test on the edge here where it's dead oh hello good morning people oh man this is crazy I mean look at that and then there's that guy there and it just keeps going and going and going yummy one of the misnomers in the industry that I wanted to kind of talk about was the preventive measurements of insecticides they don't prevent damages they actually make it so the damages are minimized these are systemic products they go through the plant so as the insect eats he gets the insecticide and dies so here's a time that you've all been waiting for guys how are we gonna solve this problem Jinja well it's pretty simple we're gonna solve this problem a couple different ways we're gonna do number one we're gonna do lawn aeration this is gonna open up core plugs so we can get the insecticides in there as soon as possible insecticides wise I'm gonna put the links to the products in the description so you guys can have those I'm gonna post some products that are really cheap to mix together but for those of you who just want a real quick granular we're gonna I'm gonna post that to the products that I'm gonna put down our curative and a preventive or curative measure is going to be a lambda Sai hollow threat I want something that gets in there fast and that starts killing now our preventive measurements typically going to be made out of imidacloprid they're going to travel through the plant because we're coming on to turf insects season for cranberry Girdler xand sod web worms so I need something that's both curative preventive your preventive measures are gonna last anywhere between eight and twelve weeks but you got to keep them wet and you got to keep them healthy as well I'm going to add an additional product called pencha bark now the idea behind the pincher bark is it helps open the source of the grass blades that help the insecticides actually penetrate that grass lay it's giving you some curative and preventive measurements but it gets the insecticides in there ASAP now if you're just using a preventive insecticides it can take almost ten days now the other thing is is I want to start attacking those shallow roots now so my recommendation is use lawn aeration to do an over seed in this instance they have a pure Kentucky bluegrass so that's going to be my recommendation now Kentucky bluegrass does take a little while to germinate and so they're gonna have to stay on top of the water if you want something fast fast-acting that RTF tall fescue by Bayer brug is my number one choice all right guys we got them holes with the bubbles the best thing you could do with these is hit it with zinc phosphide it's labeled for voles and go first typically on the label you're gonna do localized treatments with a little teaspoon every eight to 16 feet in the holes now it's got a real pungent smell to it if I the dogs and cats don't like to go after it which is the best part but you want to make sure you stay localized now as for preventive measures because that's just a curative measure you can find repellents online that are made out of castor oil a special blend of garlic some peppers heck it might work on the vampires at the same time too now if you decide to go with a repellent route it's it's important that you reapply every month since it's an organic solution you want to start at the outside of the base of the home first and then step it out ten feet after every application this kind of pushes the voles away from the structure now voles are an interesting creature the only thing they want to do is infiltrate foundations and that's why it's not uncommon to see them around trampolines and rock walls the guys that wraps it up for another episode of what's wrong with my lawn now this was a little crazy we have about two or three things going on but just remember guys it all starts with watering ninety percent of the issues that I come and see if the lawn had been healthy from the gecko and had they had appropriate watering we wouldn't have these issues you guys like what I do don't forget to hit the subscribe button on your way out and if you like my videos hit me up with the comment and hit the like button you love to help you guys out we'll see you on the next time

Channel: Pest and Lawn Ginja

Views: 266,486

Keywords: pest and lawn ginja, ginja, grub worm, grub worm killer, how to kill grubs, diy grub control, grub control, diy, billbug, billbug treatment, turf insecticide, grub damage, grub damage repair, grub worms, controlling grubs in your lawn, controlling grubs, grass pulls up easily, lawn pulls up easily, lawn is dead, dead spots in lawn, turf insect, sod webworm, cranberry girdler, webworms in grass

Id: mUURfNxJZwc

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 01 2018