Welcome to Growing Wisdom and today we are going to talk Grubs. Grubs are something that affects lawns over a good region of the country. Grubs are actually the larvae form of beetles and there are, depending on where you are, many different types of grubs. One of the most common ones we hear about are Japanese beetle grubs but there is other white grubs that live in your lawn. They basically eat the roots of the grass plant. You are literally able to pull back the grass and you will see the grubs underneath and you will also notice you have no roots on your grass plant.

You might see things like crows digging at your lawn trying to get at them or skunks. Skunks love white grubs and you will see little holes dug around. One or two grubs in the lawn is not a problem You need to have about eight to ten per square foot before you treat, so we do want to put down any chemicals unless it is absolutely necessary.

Milky Spore is a natural bacteria that basically only attacks Japanese beetle grubs. So if you have more than Japanese beetle grubs in your lawn, this would not work on the other ones. Milky Spore needs warm soil temperatures, so there is some indication that you really need to be in zone six or higher before this will really work, but you can give it a try, it is not going to harm your lawn.

A lot of us like to be organic but you can use chemicals, and there is basically two types that I want to talk about. The first one is something that acts really fast and this particular chemical here is Trichlorfon, and that is sometimes sold as Dylox, which is just the brand name. Bayer also has a 24-hour grub killer and this will work. This works really fast. You want to spread this sometime during the August into the early September timeframe when the grubs have hatched, they are small, they are near at the top of the soil.

The other thing you can use is something called Merit, and Merit has a chemical in it, and this particular chemical is called, Imidacloprid, and Imidacloprid is a chemical that takes a while to build up in the soil. So this one, you want to be applying in the mid to late spring timeframe, so that its there when the grubs are hatching. You cannot apply this late in the season because it will take too long. And by the time it is into the soil, the grubs are already very deep, and the soils are already getting too cold.

Some of these chemicals maybe banned in your states, so you need to check that. Remember, you can look in your lawn. You can actually see the grubs, peel it back, if you see a lot of grubs, you have a problem, and you should treat it.

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