5 Pests Common To Gainesville Landscaping & What To Do About Them
Mar 12th 2020
The same climate that makes Gainesville a desirable place to live also helps insects and animals flourish here. Most are harmless wonders of nature and may even be welcomed at some homes, but others are pests that damage lawns and gardens. Early detection of the signs of pest-related damage — wilted grass, brown patches, bite marks — is the surest way to stop an insect or animal problem, while landscaping maintenance can prevent issues in the future.
Here is a list of five pests that are frequent but uninvited visitors to landscaping in Gainesville, along with tips for dealing with them.
Chinch Bugs
While turfgrasses, such as St. Augustine grass, are the most popular grasses in Florida, they also happen to be the world’s tastiest snacks for southern chinch bugs. Chinch bugs create yellow or brown patches in lawns and tend to strike at areas that are stressed for water or exposed directly to sunlight. Not all yellowing or browning grass is due to chinch bugs, however. To find out if an infestation caused your lawn’s damage, check for chinch bugs along the border of the healthy green grass and the brown patches. The insects can be identified by their oblong shaped, black and gray bodies about one-sixth of an inch long as well as their distinctive red or orange legs.
Once a chinch bug problem has been found, acting quickly can prevent further lawn damage. Use a designated pesticide to eradicate the bugs and keep them away going forward. For a non-chemical preventive technique, try using less fertilizer.
Fire Ants
Fire ants disturb landscaping by building visible mounds of dirt in lawns, beside trees and stumps, and underneath structures, such as sidewalks and garden sheds. What’s worse is that any attempt to demolish a fire ant hill, such as with a shovel, causes the ants to attack en masse. This makes fire ants a health hazard, as well as a lawn care nuisance. Fire ants on commercial landscaping could also be a legal liability if a customer or employee were bitten. Anyone who has felt the sting of a fire ant bite isn’t likely to forget the experience. A single bite causes a painful burning sensation along with pustules and intense itching for up to 10 days. Having an allergy to fire ants could cause a person to suffer even more dire consequences.
Native to South America, fire ants are an invasive species in the Florida landscape. They are more aggressive and resilient than common ant species, making them challenging to get rid of. Fire ant removal consists of bait and mound treatments, but fire ants tend to return and outcompete other ants for food and territory, which can lead to a worse infestation. The most effective way of controlling fire ants is with regular treatments that keep the populations low.
Raccoons
Raccoons are the only mammals on this list, but their impact on gardens and lawns in Gainesville can’t be overstated. While raccoons don’t target specific landscaping features, their sharp claws, erratic behavior, and insatiable appetites put entire landscapes at risk.
Raccoons dig in lawns, gardens, and mulch piles looking for insects, so finding holes in these places can be a sign that raccoons are visiting. However, lots of animals and even some insects can dig holes in the ground, so it’s worthwhile to look for other evidence. For example, raccoons feed on birdseed. If your birdfeeder goes from full to empty overnight, that was probably the handiwork of a raccoon. Most people want raccoons gone without harming them. One option is to place live traps and relocate the animals at least three miles away and preferably in the wild. You can also deter the raccoons from coming near your garden and other areas of landscaping by installing bright lights or party streamers to scare away the animals or encircling the areas with garlic and chili powder.
No matter which type of pest problem your lawn or garden has, our professional landscapers with Evergreen Lawn Care can provide a pest control solution as well as repair the damage to the landscaping. We can also prevent pest problems through custom lawn care maintenance and fertilization plan that keep your lawn lush and healthy all year. To schedule lawn care services, please contact us today!
Tropical Sod Webworms
The live-and-let-live approach taken with fall webworms doesn’t apply to the other type of webworm known as tropical sod webworms. These hungry caterpillars feed on Florida turfgrasses, such as St. Augustine, Bermuda, and zoysia grass, and they can damage large sections of lawns overnight. Signs of damage from sod webworms include uneven blades of grass with ragged tips, less volume of grass (fewer blades), and scattered brown patches. Since the caterpillars feed at night and hide beneath the blades during the day, they can be difficult to locate. One hint of a sod webworm presence is when moths fly out of the grass as you walk through it. If moths are present, chances are their hungry larvae are there, too.
The best preventative measures against tropical sod webworms are mowing, irrigating, and fertilizing a lawn properly. If you’re too busy for regular lawn care, hire a professional landscaping company to maintain the grass for you. A sod webworm infestation can be eradicated with designated pesticides. Lawns can recover from the caterpillars, but only if the grass hasn’t suffered other traumas.
Fall Webworm
Two kinds of webworms can be found around Gainesville. One of them, the fall webworm, is known for building tents of webbing on the ends of tree branches. These cocoons — the webworm isn’t a worm but a caterpillar — are where these soon-to-be moths live and munch on leaves from the late summer to early winter. Local trees favored by fall webworms include black walnut, bald cypress, persimmon, pecan, sweet gum, and hickory. However, these insects have been known to dine on at least 85 species of trees, which means few landscapes are exempt from their visits. Fortunately, fall webworms eat dead leaves and cause no harm to a tree’s health.
Though fall webworm tents can be eyesores in trees, these temporary structures disappear once the caterpillars metamorphize and take flight as moths. Trimming the branches or introducing pesticides to remove the caterpillars will likely harm the tree’s growth or kill off the insects’ natural predators, causing even more of them to show up. Instead, the best option is to leave the fall webworm alone and, if a natural predator doesn’t take it first, it’ll leave on its own soon enough.
