Insect Control Strategies

Ask any veteran lawn care professional about the keys to a successful lawn care program, and you’ll usually hear about the importance of sufficient irrigation and fertilization in order to develop healthy turfgrass. These lawn care professionals will probably also chuckle a bit as they tell you this because they know how rarely homeowners deliver appropriate irrigation and fertilizer to their lawns.

Instead, homeowners often take a very reactive approach to lawn care – when the grass starts to turn brown, then they do something. But, by this time, the problem has generally already established itself as a verifiable lawn pest. And that often means insects.

While there are a number of turf insects that can wreak havoc with turf, grubs are generally the most widely talked about because of the extent of the damage they can cause and their presence in so much of the country. But a successful insecticide program includes control strategies for any insects that may arise on a property.

THE IPM QUESTION. Pest control programs – regardless of the pest – have become commonly viewed in the light of the term integrated pest management (IPM) in recent years. Although definitions for IPM vary based on who you talk to, the general concept is that problematic weed, insect or disease areas in the landscape are treated only once the cause of the problem has been identified. The idea is that such a strategy will shift lawn care operators away from making blanket applications of pesticides to an entire property when the product doesn’t need to be applied to the entire area.

Many lawn care professionals and researchers are beginning to question the validity of applying the IPM concept to insect control, however, because insects can inflict a tremendous amount of damage to a landscape in short order. That damage is generally enough to at least cost a lawn care operator dollars in terms of a guarantee or a callback, and there is certainly potential for losing the customer entirely.

"We try to treat a large percentage of our lawns with a preventive application of an insecticide," related Jack Robertson, president, Robertson Lawn Care, Springfield, Ill. "I’ve always felt that even though these preventive applications aren’t true IPM, doing this is important from a customer satisfaction standpoint because if a customer has an insect problem that could be the last straw and cost you that customer."

As a result, lawn care operators like Robertson are prescribing preventive treatments for pest problems representing the most potential damage.

"Now that the preventive applications can be made on the fertilizer we can kill two birds with one stone," observed Robertson.

The Lawn Co., South Dennis, Mass., is hoping to enjoy the best of both worlds this year by outfitting its lawn care technicians’ vehicles with additional spray tanks.

"We’ll apply preventives for insects such as grubs to as much as 70 percent of our customers’ properties," noted Don McMahon, agronomist, The Lawn Co. "But we’re testing a four-tank system this year in order to practice a little more IPM."

McMahon said he would like to see the preventive grub control products offer better control of surface-feeding insects as well, so this year The Lawn Co. will eliminate the application of the preventive surface-feeding insect control product for some of the company’s customers. The technicians responsible for these customers will use the new vehicles that are outfitted to let the technicians make applications of control products if and only if they should see a problem with these insects on a property.

"We used to do two annual applications for surface-feeding pests, and we’ve cut that back to one," observed McMahon. "This year we’re going to try not to make any applications for these pests other than curative applications, and we’ll see what happens.

"Customers who don’t get the preventive grub control don’t have a blanket insecticide application, so we’ll have to treat them preventively for the surface-feeding pests, but we’ll still have some technicians operating at a higher level of IPM," added McMahon.

BIOLOGY 101. Putting together an effective insect control program obviously requires examining a number of options regarding the products that are used. Part of this examination includes biological or bio-pesticide products for more and more contractors due to increasing environmental pressure and government regulations.

"By definition, a biological insecticide contains some form of a living organism," explained Albrecht Koppenhofer, specialist in turfgrass entomology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. "There is a developing market here for the more natural products," affirmed McMahon in describing the Cape Cod area. "This year we’re going to be testing neem oil and even some garlic-based products for surface insect control.

"I won’t use any of these natural products until we’ve tested them and we’re confident in the results we’ll get, but more customers are asking for these products," he continued. "I think if you’re using biological products you need to communicate that more treatments may be necessary than with traditional insecticides, but, in the long run, you’ll probably end up with a better program IPM-wise because these accounts will force you into more spot treatments."

One real challenge that exists for many contractors is educating themselves and their technicians on the capabilities and uses of these biological products in comparison to the conventional pesticide products.

"Using biological products requires a shift in the mindset to some degree on the part of the pesticide user," acknowledged Dr. Michael Brownbridge, an entomologist with the University of Vermont Entomology Research Lab, Burlington, Vt. "The biological product has to be chosen specifically based on the target pest, and then that product has to be applied in such a way to make sure it reaches the pest."

While these practices are also required for traditional pesticides, Brownbridge said biological products oftentimes have much more targeted ranges of control and specification application requirements.

"For example, nematodes can’t be applied with high-pressure sprayers because the pressure will destroy the nematodes," he noted. "And various fungi work better when applied with high-volume sprays vs. electrostatic sprays."

Because of the fact that biopesticides generally contain living organisms that provide the activity, Brownbridge also explained that there are different handling requirements for these products.

"Biological products have to be kept in appropriate storage conditions, which means keeping them cool and out of the sunlight," he noted. "Since these products contain living organisms, there are certain conditions under which they’ll thrive and there are conditions under which they’ll die. If the organisms die, the effectiveness of the product will be significantly compromised.

And while Brownbridge lauded the environmental and applicator safety benefits of biological products, he recognized the fact that their performance generally falls short of the standards lawn care operators have come to expect from traditional pesticides.

"Biological products do not deliver the instant knockdown of the pests that people have grown accustomed to," he related, adding that many lawn care operators and consumers fail to give these products a fair opportunity to succeed. "Biological pesticides deliver a gradual reduction in pest population, but the constraints of business and customer demands lead too many users of biological products to immediately blame the product when they have a control problem when the real problem may have been in the application or due to the fact that chemical residual in the soil killed the living organisms in the biological product.

"Users of conventional pesticides are much more forgiving of problems with those products than they are with biological products," Brownbridge concluded.

TALK IS CHEAP – AND IMPORTANT. Robertson also places a great deal of emphasis on the importance of communicating with customers for a successful lawn care program.

"The communication has to be there, especially when you get into August and September and the lawns start showing signs of heat-stress," he explained, adding that customers have to understand that no lawn care product is 100 percent effective. "When lawns get like that a lot of homeowners are going to have trouble identifying the cause of the problem, so they tend to blame insects regardless of whether or not there are any insects there to blame.

"Then the customer ends up wondering if whoever took care of their lawn knew what they were doing," Robertston continued.

To help facilitate these communications, Robertson said his technicians leave informative materials behind at every property they treat. "

"And we don’t offer any money-back guarantees, but we’ll keep coming back to the property and re-treating until the customer is satisfied that the problem has been taken care of," Robertson noted. "But the most important part of this customer service is reacting within 24 hours to the customer complaints, getting the product down on the lawn and getting the customer to water it in.

"You just need to make sure the customer sees some reaction so they know you’re responding to their concerns," he added.