Fall is here and with that you expect your lawn to turn brown and go dormant because of the cooler temperatures. What you don't expect is to go to bed with a healthy green lawn and wake up the next morning with a brown dead looking lawn. The cause of such a drastic change in the lawn is a small bug called sod webworm. Below are some tips and tricks to help protect your lawn from further damage once you have sod webworm.
Tips and Tricks
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| Sod Webworm Damage |
This year
sod webworm has been increasingly bad. Lawns that have been treated with a preventative are still getting webworm. Sod webworm damage can show up over night because they feed at night on the grass blades. The damage shows up as irregular brown patches in the lawn. It can look like the lawn is going dormant for the season. A great way to check which of the two is happening is to pull on the lawn. If it pulls up the carpet it is likely you have sod webworm.
Often when you pull up the lawn you can see the webworm in the soil. They look like small brown caterpillars that can grow up to an inch long. After you have determined that you have sod webworm you will want to treat the lawn with a sod webworm product. The product will not fix the damage, but it will take care of the webworm.
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| Sod Webworm |
Once the sod webworm have been taken care of it's time to decide what to do with the damage. Most of the time the grass will come back on its own, it just needs a little time to recover. With severe cases of damage, is not uncommon for the lawn not to come back completely. It is important to remember not to rake up the dead grass. Raking the grass will pull up the root system that is trying to grow. You probably won't know what is going to come back until the next spring.
Once you have determined what grass is coming back from the damage you have a couple options to fix the areas that have not come back. You can seed the areas or lay sod. For help determining your best option or for help treating webworm, we've got you covered.
Be Aware Of
Fall fertilizer is one of the most important applications of fertilizer in the season. It helps to prepare you lawn for winter and give it the extra boost it needs to green up next spring. The last application should be applied in October right before the first big freeze. For more information on fall fertilizer follow this
link to one of our previous blog posts.
Looking for a healthy, green, and weed free lawn?
Contact us today at: 435-753-5296 or mylawn@lawndoctorutah.com
