Kyle's
Corner - Your Lawn Right Now
Roughest Year EVER for Chinch Bugs!!!!
This year has been a complete nightmare with regards to controlling chinch bugs in your lawn. Even though we here at Florida’s Finest treat your lawn through the summer months preventatively for chinch bugs we still had problems controlling them in several areas of Central Florida.
The problem started last year in on our Clermont accounts. We had lawns that we sprayed 6 and seven times for chinch bugs with our usual control products and could not get control of them. We finally had to resort to older chemistry that we had left over from past years in order to get control. This worked fine but that chemistry is no longer labeled for residential use and cannot be applied anymore. We were not alone of course. Other lawn care providers were reporting the same problems in the same areas and it became obvious that chinch bugs were becoming resistant to our primary use pesticides and were surviving the treatments. This was confirmed by researchers from the University of Florida. They identified small pockets of pyrethroid resistant chinch bug populations all over the state and Clermont was one of the “hot spots”.
This year they are no longer “small pockets”, they are all over. And it is getting worse. With resistant populations the norm now we are being forced to change the way we do things. We can no longer depend on the “one spray and go away” approach to controlling chinch bugs. It just doesn’t do the job anymore. If we identify chinch bugs in a lawn then we have to schedule a follow up visit to insure that they were adequately controlled or to treat again. We have been doing this.
We have also been trying to rotate between the few classes of pesticides that we have left that are labeled for lawn care in order to try to “break the chain” of resistance. Unfortunatley our alternate choices for chinch bug control are either older products like Sevin which never did well against chinch bugs in the first place, a combination of older products that never did well in controlling chinch bugs either or a new product called ARENA which does work but is so expensive it cannot be considered as option at current pricing levels.
In addition to our regular “blanket” application of insecticide we have been using this new product ARENA as a spot treatment for visibly active areas while we are on your property for your regular treatments and during our follow up visits. It has been working well but there are going to have to be changes in both your program scheduling and the pricing of your lawn care services in order to continue to use it, even on a spot treatment only basis. We will be making some of these changes as of the first of the year.
The first change we are going to make is to separate our lawn and shrub care programs into different months. We currently do both your lawn and shrubs at the same time (if you have both programs). By treating the lawn one month and the shrubs the next we will be on your property every 4 weeks instead of every 8. We will then have a much better chance of catching chinch bugs before they have a chance to eat a hole it the lawn. This change will not affect those of you who have only lawn care services and not shrub care. If you do not have our shrub care services now you should consider them as we do not offer a sod replacement guarantee.
The second change we are going to make is a price increase to cover both the cost of using ARENA and the ever increasing cost of fuel, insurance (which went up by 100% this year), and fertilizer (which went up by 33% in the last 8 months). This increase will vary by customer and will be effective January 1rst 2008. Plan on about 10%.
CRABGRASS
The only product labeled for crabgrass control after it has emerged from the ground is no longer legal to use (Asulox). It is still available, and can be purchased but we cannot use it to kill your crabgrass. The Florida Department of Agriculture has warned us that if we get caught using it we can and will be fined up to $5000.00 per violation if we break the law (I have the letter and would be happy to email it to anyone interested in seeing it). For those of you who have been with us prior to 2004 you got a letter from our office that explained this at that time (this letter is available too).
In a effort to keep crabgrass at bay we treat your lawn twice per year with crabgrass preventer type products. These products help a lot but are nowhere near 100% effective and sooner or later the crabgrass is going to become established and will have to be dealt with.
Your options here are limited. You can cut it out and replace it with new grass when it becomes a problem, purchase and apply Asulox on your own (it is illegal for you to use too but that is your decision), or try using Baking Soda to control it.
Regular old baking soda will kill crabgrass. Just sprinkle it over the crabgrass lightly coating it and it will die. This is best done in the morning when the dew is present on the grass.
The use of baking soda is a dead end street however. Repeated use in the same area will eventually cause a permanent change in the soil pH and you will have an area that will be permanently yellow or just plain dead. We will not be using it on your lawn.
I have not confirmed it but I am told that you can purchase Asulox at “Do it Yourself” pest control supply stores. Be prepared for the price, it is very expensive. If you choose to buy it I will be happy to teach you to apply it correctly. Just call the office.
Should a legal control method again become available we will use it but for now crabgrass is an uncontrollable weed just like Bermuda grass and Alexander grass.
Kyle
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