Fall Grubs

During the hot summer months it is common to see areas of turf under stress in our fairways and rough, but as the weather cools down heading into fall we expect these areas to improve.  Over the last couple weeks there still have been some areas that persist to look as if they under stress.

13 fairway with stress areas

15 fairway

These areas have been infested with white grubs, black turfgrass ataenius to be precise.

The white dots are the ataenius grubs

The larvae feed on the roots of the plant and allow you to pull the turf right up when you grab it.  You can see in the above photo how I rolled it back. By eating the roots and cutting them off they prevent the turf from being able to take up water and thus the areas look like the are drought stressed the same as summer.
We spot treated all of the areas and then fertilized to get proper re-growth and healthy turf before we go into winter.