Aspenn Alerts

Ornamentals be on alert! July and August sees the arrival of the hungry Black Vine Weevil. Learn how to protect your landscape from this prodigious pest.

With their beautiful, waxy leaves and lush, evergreen hue, it’s no surprise that rhododendrons are the ornamental plant of choice in millions of American gardens and landscapes. Unfortunately, though, wherever you’ll find rhododendrons, you’ll often find the Black Vine Weevil too.

These hungry insects simply adore rhododendrons – although they won’t pass up feasting on Aster, Wisteria or any of a hundred other plants, shrubs or trees if their favorite food isn’t on the menu.

July and August are when Black Vine Weevils are at their worst – and you’re most likely to spot them attacking plants and shrubs on your landscape. Although the little black bugs do the worst of their work at night, you’ll be able to tell if you have a weevil problem by the tell-tale u-shaped notches they chew into the foliage of your favorite plants.

Black Vine Weevils attack your plants from two fronts. The adult weevils lurk in the debris and loose soil at the base of your plants. In July and August, they’ll lay eggs which soon turn into hungry larvae that start feasting on your infested plants roots. Very quickly, even the hardiest ornamental can yellow, whither and die.

There are various ways to protect your landscape against Black Vine Weevils. The first is to isolate any infested plants as soon as you spot that they’re under attack. This is fine for potted plants and shrubs in tubs, but not so practical if your plants or trees are rooted in the ground.

A natural way to defend your plants against Black Vine Weevil grubs and larvae is the use of predaceous nematodes – practically microscopic worm-like creatures that actively kill the Weevil grubs. These do nothing to protect your plants from the adults, but may reduce an infestation.

For the best results, consult a pest control or tree and landscape specialist like Aspenn Environmental Services. They can formulate an insect control treatment to reduce or eradicate your Black Vine Weevil problem.

Aspenn also incorporate treatments as part of their year-round Integrated Pest Management solutions – which stop problems before they begin by preemptively treating for common garden pests before they have the chance to cause an infestation.

The summer is the traditional time for making the most of your landscape, so how can you make sure it looks its best even under the relentless heat of the summer sun?

After a surprisingly cool summer last year, July and August 2010 look set to break heat records all across the country. Scientists predict the hottest summer since global records began in 1880.

But all this heat has an impact on your lawn. You might have spotted it already – brown and wilted grass, bald spots and patchy turf. A lot of this is caused by the sheer stress of the summer sun – dry soil and dried out grass can leave your landscape looking less than impressive.

Here are some quick and practical tips to protect your turf from the worst of the weather:

• Water Your Grass: It seems obvious, but many people don’t seem to make the connection between a brown and wilted lawn and the sheer lack of moisture. Setting up a lawn sprinkler and feeding your lawn with fresh, life-giving water is the easiest step to giving your grass a fighting chance against the heat.
• Raise Your Mower: One of the simplest ways to keep your landscape green and lush is to simply let it grow longer. That way the grass retains more moisture and nutrients, and can soak up more sun to grow and repair itself. Set your mower to the tallest setting – you can always give your lawn a shorter trim in fall.
• Stop the Traffic: For most of the year, your grass and landscape are happy to be used. In the summertime, though, when your kids are reenacting the World Cup in your back yard, they’re also creating scuffs and bald patches that will spoil the look of your lawn. Don’t erect a ‘Keep off the Grass’ sign by any means, but be aware of how much traffic your lawn is getting and do your best to limit it.

Sometimes, even adopting all three of these best practices isn’t enough to keep your lawn looking lovely. If that’s the case, don’t despair. It might not be your fault. The brutal temperatures are ideal for cultivating some nasty fungal infections in your lawn – these might be what’s causing your ugly grass.

Grass-based cankers like anthracnose – sometimes known as basal rot or foliar blight – spread swiftly during the hotter weather and can cause the brown grass and stubborn patchiness.

Fungal infections are tricky to treat, so the best way to deal with the problem is to contact a reputable tree and lawn care specialist like Aspenn Environmental Services. In addition to offering treatments to repair your lawn, they offer year-round lawn and shrub spraying which can prevent problems from occurring the following summer.

Aspenn’s assistance goes further, though. In addition to dealing with the problems causing your less-than-impressive lawn, they can advice on aerating, fertilizing and even reseeding – all of which can transform your landscape and make it a point of pride again.

Don’t let the name fool you. The Japanese Beetle might have originated on the other side of the world, but this destructive pest is a clear and present danger to your shrubs and plants here in America.

These days, customs officers confiscate foreign fruit, plants and livestock at the border – but it wasn’t always this way. Back in 1912, visitors to the United States could bring whatever they wanted into the country and that’s how the infamous Japanese Beetle was originally brought to our shores.

A pretty green and brown beetle about two-thirds of an inch long, Japanese Beetles spend most of the winter in grub form, buried underground. As June arrives, they crawl out of the ground and start feasting on whatever’s around – unlike their native Japanese ones, American gardens are like a buffet for them.

The surest sign you’ve got a Japanese Beetle problem in your garden will be skeletal leaves – leaves that resemble ‘skeletons’ because all the leaf material between the veins has been eaten away. This is the trademark of the Japanese Beetle and devastating to your plants and trees.

These greedy pests are only active for about six weeks in the early summer – but can cause plenty of damage during that time. When the adult beetles die off, though, that’s not the end of your problems.

During their active period, female beetles lay up to 100 eggs in the soil of your lawn or garden and for the rest of the year, a new generation of Japanese Beetles matures in grub-form beneath your feet. These white grubs feed off grass roots, so even if your trees and shrubs managed to survive the adult beetles, their offspring can devastate your turf over the space of the next few months.

Dealing with Japanese Beetles is a tricky proposition – and one best left to the professionals. Minor infestations can be dealt with in June and July by picking individual beetles off your plants and drowning them in soapy water. Another method is to simply plant shrubs that the beetles don’t eat – but Japanese Beetles snack on over 300 species of American foliage, so that’s easier said than done.

One thing to avoid is the use of so-called ‘beetle traps.’ Although sold at many garden centers to trap and kill Japanese Bugs, the University of Kentucky recently discovered that these commercial traps attract more bugs than they actually kill – meaning you’ll end up bringing more new bugs to your garden than you actually trap.

Tree and lawn care specialists will be able to deliver a better solution – one that deals with both the adult bugs and the grubs they leave behind. This double-hitter ultimately protects both your plants and your lawn, by preventing these insects from returning the following year.

Once the grubs are eliminated, is to repair the damage they’ve done to your lawn. Depending on how early you caught the infestation, this might just require aerating or fertilizing. If you need to reseed, tree and lawn care specialists like Aspenn Environmental Services will be able to help you choose hardy varieties of grass seed which will be more resistant to future problems.

Don’t let Japanese Beetles wreck your lawn or landscape. If you spot the tell-tale signs, such as skeletal leaves or the beetles themselves on your favorite plants, call a professional service immediately.

We spoke to G. from Edison, N.J. on how he discovered the reason why his lawn was never as green and beautiful as his neighbors.

“I never had the most beautiful lawn on my block – quite the opposite, in fact. My yard was scruffy and threadbare, with clumps and circles of brown and wilted grass, interspersed by bald patches of bare earth.”

“But while my neighbors might not have been impressed, my ugly lawn was certainly popular with the local wildlife. At night, the oppressive stench of skunk musk became a regular fixture, while in the daytime my yard was filled with so many birds it looked like an out-take from an Alfred Hitchcock film.”

“Little did I know that the two were related – something I only discovered when I decided to deal with a stubborn stump that was making my unattractive yard look even scruffier than usual.”

“Taking an ax to the stump, I tore the rotten wood from the Earth and discovered what I immediately assumed were some kind of alien beasties – large, white creatures wriggling and writhing in the soil.”

“Now I’d seen caterpillars, grubs, maggots and worms but I’d never seen anything like these before. They almost looked like uncooked shrimp, with a long, white body and scraggly, useless looking legs. They were hideous.”

“It turned out, though, that these disgusting creatures weren’t related to the thing that burst out of John Hurt’s chest in Alien. A neighbor of mine soon identified them as common grubworms.”

“Grubworms are the larvae of June Bugs – the hungry beetles that appear (appropriately enough) in June and tear my shrubs and leaves to shreds. During their brief appearance, female June Bugs lay dozens of eggs in the soil and these wriggly white worms are the result. They live underneath our feet until the following season, when the whole cycle repeats itself.”

“The grubworms, my neighbor informed me, were the reason my lawn looked so horrible. They chow down on the roots of my grass and plants – destroying them right from under the ground in the same way Bugs Bunny used to gnaw the bottoms off Elmer Fudd’s carrots.”

“What’s more, they were also responsible for turning my yard into something you’d have expected to see on The Discovery Channel – a haven for the hungry local wildlife. Birds, raccoons and even our recurrent skunk were paying visits to dig these plump grubs out of the earth and eat them (unfortunately, they hadn’t eaten nearly enough to save my lawn.)”

“My neighbor put me in touch with Aspenn Environmental Services and they helped save my lawn. I discussed with them my concerns about using nasty chemicals and pesticides and they reassured me that they keep the exposure my family and pets have to artificial chemicals at a minimum.”

“They use chemical treatments specifically targeted to a type of insect or grub infestation, which produces better results and requires less chemical treatment than just spraying around using a plain, old ‘General Insecticide’.”

“For example, to deal with grubs infesting my lawn, Aspenn used an insecticide that kills the larvae as they fed on the roots of the grass itself. The best thing about that is that it only affected insects that chowed down on the root system, so the insects and wildlife that actually helped my lawn weren’t affected, and my pets and family were safe.”

“What Aspenn Environmental Services did that really impressed me, though, was repair the damage the grubs had done. They aerated my lawn and put down fertilizers that slowly turned the brown and wilted grass into thick and green turf. Apparently, I’d been lucky – grub infestation like mine can require starting again from scratch.”