Is your Lawn Infested with White Grubs?

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.”