Abnormal brown patches have been popping up in lawns this year as a result of a high number of armyworms.
Aaron Bullington with Imperial Lawns said that if a residential lawn is looking unusually brown or barren, there’s as much as a 95% chance it’s from armyworms.
Bullington said that in his 20 years of lawn care work, he has only seen armyworms cause this much damage in 2014. He said they are typically more prevalent in the south because of the specific weather that attracts them.
Locally, due to the extended period of high heat and dry weather, brown grass can make it difficult to decipher if armyworms are the cause.
Bullington said to test it out, dump out a bucket filled with some lemon dish detergent on a stressed area of the lawn and see if any of the pests emerge from the ground.
He said the company has noticed particular emergence of armyworms this year in subdivisions such as Whispering Meadows, Hunters Ridge, and Woodland Ridge.
“We’ve had some lawns where the people have gone to bed and their lawn was green, and when they woke up the next morning it was brown,” Bullington said.
According to Bullington, it takes only two to three days for the worms work across an entire yard.
