What Are The Signs of Grubs in the Lawn?

The great looking lawn you’ve worked so hard to create is the ideal nursery site for many types of moths and beetles. Every year, after mating season, these flying creatures lay their eggs in your lawn. Over the winter, the eggs hatch and develop into grubs. Grubs are the immature state of moths and beetles.

Everything needs to eat. Grubs, being underground, find a lot of their nutrition in the healthy root system of your lawn. All the hard work you do planting, fertilizing, mowing and otherwise caring for your lawn can be lost if a large number of grubs eat up your lawn’s root system.

How can you tell if there are grubs in your lawn? It is hard to see the grubs, because they are located underground. If you do see them, they look like a thick white caterpillar, generally curled up like a little ball when you encounter them. This might happen if you’re digging in the soil, but is otherwise unlikely. The more common way to detect the presence of grubs in the lawn is to look for the damage they’ve caused.

As a lawn care company in Humarock, here are the signs we tell people to watch for:

New areas of yellowing grass. When grass is dying due to grub activity, it dies from the roots up. This causes the grass to turn yellow. The ground can feel somewhat spongy when you step in these areas.

An increased number of beetles and moths. Eventually the grubs stop eating your grass. They go through another metamorphosis, and emerge from the ground in their final form as moths or beetles. At this point, the damage they do to your lawn is minimal, although some beetles are very tough on ornamental plantings. You’ll see moths and beetles returning to your lawn to lay eggs as well. This is a good sign to call your local lawn service for pest control.