A note from President Jim Campanella:

 

Fall is here! The kids are back in school, the air is cool and crisp, football season is in full swing, the leaves are colorful, and it's time to break out the warmer clothes. The cooler temperatures and rainfall during the fall season provide the perfect weather conditions for your lawn. After the drought and summer heat stress, your lawn should be finally reaping the benefits of summer fertilizer applications and beginning to come back to life in a healthy state. At Lawn Dawg, we are entering fall busy as ever providing customers core aeration, overseeding, and winterizer treatment services. Sooner than we know it, the holiday season will be upon us and snow will cover the ground.

 

Since our summer newsletter, we have asked for more customer feedback than ever before. I would like to thank everyone who helped us by providing feedback either through our Report Card or Customer Survey, as well as those who continue to do so. These initiatives are the first steps towards improving all aspects of Lawn Dawg and we are grateful for the overwhelming response. In the end we take your feedback and learn about the good and bad which allows us find corrective solutions and make improvements from customer service to products and most importantly final results.

 

In this newsletter you'll find a feature of the winners of our summer give-a-ways, fall maintenance tips, an informational article on sod webworms, and exclusive team photos from each Lawn Dawg branch! There is also a special offer on our Tree and Shrub care program for customers on our newsletter list! 
 

 

Just when you thought summer was over... 

Sod Webworms

 

Along comes another reminder that things were just a little bit out of whack with our weather this summer.
　
As the weather has cooled in the past month or so, we have been noticing our lawn coming out of dormancy and resuming its normal, vibrant habits.
　
Well, most of them, anyway.

 

Have you come across the nearly translucent caterpillar who has a brown, almost copper colored head. They usually can be found crawling around in the thatch of lawn. Well the name of this critter is none other than the Sod Webworm.
　
Actually, there are lots of different species that belong to the genus called Crambus that are considered webworms. They are pests not only of turf, but other crops such as corn and cranberries.

 

The adult sod webworm does not feed, it is the larval stage that does that. And they are nocturnal feeders, so unless you're out on your lawn at night you're unlikely to encounter them.

 

The sod webworm tends to populate lawns that are the most capable of masking the damage they cause - lawns that have good soil moisture and good healthy grass that is growing at a steady clip.

 

However, if you walk across the lawn looking down at the surface, a sod webworm infested lawn will appear to have thousands of holes in the thatch as big around as a pencil. These can be hard to see; the holes will then tend to appear and disappear as you move. These are the burrows of the larva - little webworm homes that they occupy during the day.

 

The sod webworm completes two generations per season for most species, the larvae of the second generation overwintering a few inches deep into the soil. It is the larvae of the second generation, the one that is present now, that causes the most damage. Further, it is the lawns that are under fertilized and under irrigated that are most prone to damage as healthier lawns are capable of outgrowing the damage.
　
If you think your lawn may have sod webworm damage, please contact your Lawn Dawg Specialist and we will treat for the issue. In most cases, though, normal fertilization and irrigation will push out the damage and the lawn will recover all by itself now that the weather has turned more favorable.