Okay, so i raked up the top two inches of a section of our lawn and pulled out all of the weeds in preparation for transplanting some sod from a new garden bed. Whilst doing this I hand picked out 30 of these slimy grub worms with brown heads. Is this a natural occurrence or should I try to treat these before I put the sod down?

Thanks!
Christina

How big was the section of lawn? A lawn in good shape can handle some grubs When you raked was it easy for the grass to just pull up? If it was easy for the lawn to pull up (I'm talking cool season, don't know how raking a warm season lawn behaves) then you may have a serious grub problem - they eat the roots. In my area (New England) there are at least two types of grubs that cause serious lawn problems (then the adult beetles attack your roses etc.). Milky spore is for Japanese Beetles and takes at least a year to start working - but it supposedly lasts for many years in your soil. Gardens alive and other places sells beneficial nematodes that will kill both types of grubs and a few other pests as well. Skunks and crows will dig up your lawn to eat the grubs and starlings will peck the hell out it. I haven't noticed any other bird to eat the grubs.

Here's a link with a lot of good information:

http://www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/homegrnd/htms/39nemat.htm

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Kathy Z6 Mass

whoops! is this the grub that you're talking about?

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... 8%26sa%3DN

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Kathy Z6 Mass

yep, those are the worms we had. the section of lawn was about three foot wide and about fifteen feet long. we put down compost, corn meal and grass seed this spring on two different sections of grass separated by a sidewalk. both sides did well until a couple of months ago when this one section just started dying off. I was left wth about 2/3 bare dirt and the rest as weeds.

does anyone know if it will be effective to treat for grubs this late into autumn?

Milky spore has to be eaten by the grubs to become effective and I have to respectfully disagree with our Mass friend about the delay in working. Perhaps the longer cool season slows the ability of the pathogen to become widespread enough to work but down here in the sun-belt we get results a whole lot quicker. Beneficial nematodes have to move through water and become less active as the weather cools so yeah, it's probably a little late to put them out. Rule of thumb on grubs is if you dig up a square foot of soil and there's more than 10 grubs in it you may have a problem. Our lovely june beetle grubs love to eat roots.

To get your grass growing back, try a heavy application of molasses (2-4 oz/gallon water) or compost tea in the section that is ill. I swear molasses will make grass grow where nothing else will work. Follow that up with mulch on the soil where the grass died. As any of us who fights bermuda knows, nothing will make that stuff grow like an inviting 1-2" cover of shredded harwood mulch! By the way, was the seed bermuda, fescue, what?

Hope this helps!

Here's the part of the link (UCONN) about the soil temp and other conditions to apply nematodes:

Also, the best results are obtained when the relative humidity is high, ambient temperature is neither extremely hot or cold, soil temperature is between 55o and 90oF, soil is moist and direct sunlight is minimal. All of these factors help prevent the nematodes from drying out and increase their survival

The only area I have a problem with grubs is the two foot strip between the sidewalk and the street. It gets blasted by the heat/sun in the summer and the rock salt in the winter. They're digging up my street next July so I purchased some stonecrop and some thyme that I'm going to propogate along to replace the two twenty foot long strips and two five foot strips of lawn. It should be interesting, hope it works because I'm tired of babying the grass in that area.

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Kathy Z6 Mass

Hi Kathie, the grass seed that we put down was a cool weather blend of fescue and other stuff I believe. However, we put this down before we undercut the tree on the other side of the sidewalk for safety reasons (our sick mulberry). I think perhaps this is a result of many bad things going on here. I began putting down the molasses like you mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago and the grass under the tree is going wild! It loves this stuff. As for the section of grass between the sidewalk and the street - we just found out that it is going to have to be dug out anyway due to a hole in the pipe leading to the main city sewer tap. Sooo, I am going to go ahead and put down mulch over the compost and lava sand I just mixed in there and put down a ton of molasses to try to maintain the health of the soil until after the plumbing repairs when i can attempt to put down new sod.

Fingers crossed,
Christina

Nina,
Sounds like you have the situation under control! Isn't molasses amazing?! Hope your mulberry is getting better. Hard to tell this time of year, isn't it? I had to dig out an ornamental plum in my new yard...I knew it was planted too deep but it was REALLY planted too deep! I had to lower the soil around the trunk by 6 inches. The former owners had built up a raised bed around it so that was much of the problem. I took out all the plants & transplanted them, brought the level of the soil back to the surrounding turf and mulched the heck out of it. I think it's happier already!
Talk to ya later!
Kathe

Nina, just for the record, what kind of molasses did you use (liquid or dry) and how much per 1,000 square feet?

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David Hall
Moderator
Dirt Doctor Lawns Forum

Hi David
I kinda went crazy with the molasses (liquid) under my sick tree. The area under this tree is about 40' x 40' so that is ? 1600 sq ft ? I used about eleven ounces of liquid molasses with a sprayer and then watered in for about ten minutes the first time til it started running off. The next week i was able to water a little bit longer and so on. Now I am up to watering about thirty minutes a week and keeping up the molasses. Oh yeah, and I threw out a bag of corn meal from my kitchen that was going to waste in there.

I do a ? - should I have some sort of mulch on this tree? There is plenty of root flare but some of the little roots are coming up and I worry that putting mulch on top of them will cause rotting.