Grubs in Sarasota Lawns: The Root-Eating Pests That Kill Grass from Below

Grubs are pale, squishy, slimy and gross.

If you were just eating a cheesy bean burrito as you started reading this, sorry.

Thought we’d get the disgusting part over with right away. 

These icky insects munch the roots right out from under your grass, causing whole sections of your once-pretty lawn to turn brown and die. They can really devastate your lawn, and you didn’t even see it coming. 

What’s the secret to controlling grubs in lawns? Preventive insecticide, perfectly timed, to kill the grubs before they destroy your lawn. Frequent visits by lawn care pros who keep an eye out for signs of grubs and kill them quickly. Good lawn care practices, including proper irrigation. If you water too much, the extra moisture attracts grubs.

Let’s learn more about grub damage to grass, including: 

• First, What Exactly Are Grubs?
• How to Identify Lawn Grubs?
• Grub Damage to Grass is Patchy and Irregular
• Your Lawn Will Roll Back Like a Carpet
• Critters Suddenly Love Your Lawn
• If You’re Not Squeamish, Take a Peek
• How to Control Grubs in Lawns
• Grubs in Sarasota Lawns: We’re On It
• Why Partner with One Skilled Company for All Your Landscaping Needs?
• Controlling Grubs in Lawns: Should You Do It Yourself?

First, What Exactly Are Grubs? 

Grubs are the larvae of Japanese beetles, June beetles, chafers, and other assorted beetles. Tiny, squishy, and shaped like little Cs, they don’t look like they’d do too much damage. 

The trouble is, they’re really, really hungry. 

Grubs typically move in during June and July. The beetles lay their eggs in the ground, the eggs hatch into white, slimy, wriggly grubs, and the grubs feast on your lawn’s roots, killing the grass and destroying your lawn.  

Grub damage to grass can happen really fast. 

One day you’re looking out at your healthy lawn, maybe thinking a relaxing hammock might be nice out there, and the next thing you know entire patches of your lawn are brown, dry, and wilted. 

This is stressful. You could definitely use that hammock. 

How to Identify Lawn Grubs?

They won’t pop up out of your lawn and introduce themselves. They’re too busy chowing down and ruining your grass. 

So how do you know if you have grubs?

There are a few tell-tale signs:

Grub Damage to Grass is Patchy and Irregular

Grubs don’t eat in tidy rows the way you neatly eat your corn on the cob. They chow down like crazed hungry teenagers, so the damage is scattered all over your lawn in irregular dead brown patches. 

Your Lawn Will Roll Back Like a Carpet 

As grubs devour the roots of your grass, there’s nothing connecting the grass to the soil. So your lawn becomes loose enough to lift up and roll back like a rug. And when you walk across it, it no longer feels firm and solid — it feels sort of spongey underfoot.

If none of this sounds good, you’re right. 

Critters Suddenly Love Your Lawn 

As much as grubs love to eat your lawn, animals love to munch grubs.

So if you suddenly notice birds, raccoons and skunks eagerly digging around in your lawn, there’s a good chance they’re feasting on grubs. So in addition to grub damage to grass, you have a bunch of holes in your lawn from the critter buffet. Yay! 

If You’re Not Squeamish, Take a Peek 

If you’re the take action type, head out there and dig up a small section of your lawn and look for the C-shaped, white larvae just below the surface. Then, go enjoy your lunch. 

How to Control Grubs in Lawns 

Timing is everything when it comes to controlling grubs in your lawn. It’s important to kill them before they begin to feast on your grass.
 
So prevention is your best bet.
 
Preventive grub treatment is a key part of Sarasota lawn pest solutions
and is included in the top two tiers of Tropical Gardens’ comprehensive lawn care programs.

Here in Sarasota we apply it in May to catch the grubs as they hatch in early summer. That May timing is important because it ensures the product is already active in the soil when the next generation of grubs emerges.

Prevent grubs, and you’ll avoid expensive lawn replacement. These tiny pests really can quickly destroy an entire lawn. 

Here’s how the prevention works:

• The active ingredients in the insecticide are absorbed into the grass.
• When the newly hatched grubs begin to feed on your grass roots, they ingest the insecticide and die before they can cause damage.
• The treatment provides protection for the entire grub season, helping to prevent grub damage to your grass. 

Grubs in Sarasota Lawns: We’re On It

Part of the reason Tropical Gardens crews visit your yard so often is to stay on top of issues like damaging grubs.
 
We include more frequent visits than most other lawn care companies, showing up at your yard once a month for 8-10 months of the season. 

We control about 90 percent of grubs through prevention, but if you do end up with a sudden infestation, you want it taken care of fast. 

Grubs can eat 400 square feet of lawn roots in just 30 days, so there’s no time to waste. 

Other lawn care companies typically visit six times a year. That leaves a lot of time in between for grub damage to lawns. 

We’re on your property more often than some of your family members. If there’s a sign of grub damage, we’ll see it and take care of it.

When grubs are already actively eating your lawn’s roots, we use a contact insecticide to stop them fast. 

Contact insecticides work by killing insects through direct contact with the active ingredient. Most work by disrupting the insect's nervous system, causing it to lose coordination and die.

Why Partner with One Skilled Company for All Your Landscaping Needs?

So, your grubs are gone. Now what? Chances are, you need more than Sarasota lawn pest solutions. 

Tropical Gardens crews will fix any lawn damage, by replacing areas of your lawn if needed or boosting your lawn’s health with fertilizer to restore it. 

That’s the beauty of working with one reliable Sarasota lawn care company that does it all. 

We’ll control lawn grubs and other insect pests we see nosing around. We’ll take care of any weed problems and fertilize your lawn as part of a comprehensive lawn care program. And handle any other plant health care and landscaping needs you have, too.
 
You just relax in your hammock.

Controlling Grubs in Lawns: Should You Do It Yourself?

Maybe you’ve seen a tip online that you can kill grubs by spraying them with soapy water. Question: do you really want to get close enough to the slimy buggers to spray them?

Also, this hardly seems like a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And if your lawn is packed with grubs, we’re talking thousands and thousands of grubs. Your spray bottle finger will definitely cramp.

There are products available at the home and garden store, too, but they’re typically not as effective as the professional-level products your lawn care team would use.

And, as we mentioned earlier, timing is critical when it comes to grub prevention. It needs to happen in May, which is just about the busiest month at most average households.
 
What if you forget? Suddenly, your lawn is grub central.
 
Why not just leave this to the pros? 

Grub Prevention Tips

Professional grub prevention is your best bet for controlling grubs in your lawn, but there are a couple other smart steps you can take to prevent these destructive pests, too:

Water Properly

Avoid frequent, light watering, which creates moist soil that egg-laying beetles love. Instead, water deeply and infrequently to encourage strong roots and let the lawn dry out a bit between waterings.

Aerate Your Sarasota Lawn Once a Year

Lawn aeration uses a machine to pull out tiny cores of soil from your lawn, breaking down thatch and allowing water and oxygen to get to the lawn’s roots again.

Thatch is that dense, spongey layer of roots and stems that builds up between your grass and the soil. Grubs love it.

If your lawn’s thatch layer is more than half an inch thick, it's time to dethatch.

Aeration should be done when your grass is actively growing, ideally in spring here in Sarasota, at the beginning of the growing season. 

Got Grubs? Talk to Us 

Grubs are gross. Keep them away from your precious lawn’s tender roots with help from Sarasota lawn care services pros who know how to get the job done.

Tropical Gardens provides tailored, full-service landscape services in Sarasota that ensure your Florida landscaping gets all the care it needs, from banishing destructive grubs to providing the best care to help prevent them in the first place.

Let’s get started. We’ll help you figure it all out. 

Give us a call or fill out our form today! Our team of Sarasota lawn pros can’t wait to transform your Florida lawn into a green oasis. No grubs allowed.