Lawns can be a pain to keep up with, but letting insects infest your property is even worse. Although bugs are little, there damage can be detrimental and destroy your plants! However, usually signs of an infestation are more noticeable than the bugs themselves. As long as you pay attention to basic warning signs, they won’t get away with much before you hire an insecticide service to take care of them!
These devious bugs can be spotted from all sorts of signs early on whether that’s in your yard, home, or garden!
Signs of An Insect-Infested Property
Irregular Brown Patches of Grass
Grubs, the larval form of a beetle species, are a common pest that damage lawns. They creep around underneath the soil and are only recognizable once they have already started their destruction. Abnormally shaped patches of brown grass are usually a sign of this, and typically start occurring in August.
Drought-damaged lawns can look very similar, so it’s important to be able differentiate the two. Grass that’s infested with grubs easily peels up from the soil due to the roots being consumed. Another distinction is that birds, moles, and skunks eat the grubs, causing damage to your lawn from locating the insects.
Spongy Lawn
As you walk through your yard, make note of any spongy feeling. If the grass feels soft and spongy, there’s a chance it’s infested with grubs. To check, pull up on the grass to see if it lifts like a carpet. Lawns that do this are likely to have grubs because they feed on the grass’s roots, causing the lawn to detach from the soil.
A spongy lawn will need grub control and insecticides as soon as possible.
Sawdust Around Baseboards
One of the most common indicators that point to an insect problem, is sawdust around your baseboards or wooden furniture. Termites, carpenter ants, and other insects eat wood and create this sawdust that lingers around it. These bugs are trouble and will not hold back on damaging your wood.
You should put an end to the damage as soon as you can because it could cost thousands of dollars to repair. Letting the termites or carpenter ants eat away on your wood will also make your home less appealing to potential buyers if you plan on selling it in the near future.
New Bug Bites
An occasional bug bite is completely normal, but it’s not every day that you find new bites and stings across your body. Unless you’re used to frequently discovering bug bites, waking up with new ones is a sign that you have an insect infestation.
Another concern regarding bites, is that it could lead to health issues if you don’t investigate it.
Dead Bugs
Seeing dead bugs around your house or yard isn’t necessarily an issue since the insects aren’t alive to cause any harm. On the downside, this can imply that you have bigger bug issues. Larger bundles of dead bugs, specifically the same type, hints that you should probably look deeper into it.
Swarms of Bugs
If you come across swarms of insects, this is a clear sign of infestation. For example, boxelder bugs are a prevalent pest that tend to swarm around windows or door frames. These insects are most likely to infest during the fall since they are searching for a winter home.
Overall, a large number of bugs in your yard, or around your home, shouldn’t go unnoticed.
More Animals on your Lawn than Usual
Many animals, mainly raccoons and birds, love to grub on grubs. Animals occasionally wander along the premise of our yards, but if there are more than usual, make sure you reach out to your friends at The Yard Butler to take care of it!
Insect Eggs or Larvae
Stumbling across insect eggs or larvae means that you have an infestation. Usually, eggs can be found in the dark and damp places of your home. Finding this in your home means that there are too many of them in their current breeding area.
The scariest part about finding eggs or larvae, is that they can be tucked in unexpected areas like your closet or bedding even. It’s less common, but a situation like that would require immediate attention. However, it’s more typical to come across in the walls of your home.
Nests
Nests are a dead giveaway that you would benefit from insecticides. Each insect has its own variation, but the most noticeable are ants, wasps, and termites. Ant hills are larger mounds of soil or plant material where the insects live. You’ll find a large number of ants inside one of these, and it’s not unusual for there to be multiple nearby. As for termites, these pests create nests underground or in wood. Wasp nests rarely go unnoticed, especially since you can hear them swarming and buzzing around the area.
Visible Grubs on Your Lawn
Any lawn with five or more grubs in one square foot area means it’s infested. These white bugs are small in size, ranging from 1/4 of an inch to a little over an inch in length. They have wrinkly bodies that are soft, and legs that are placed near their heads. Most people get really frustrated with grubs because they are so hard to detect until they’ve done their damage.
If you keep your lawn mostly healthy, grubs shouldn’t be an issue, but it’s still possible. You can avoid them by fertilizing, having mulch, and keeping your grass at least two inches tall. The length is important because beetles usually lay their eggs in shorter grass. When watering, do so sparingly by fully soaking the ground, this causes the turf to have deeper roots and grow strong. Aerating your lawn also helps since beetles like compacted soil that hasn’t been touched.
Damaged Yard and Garden Plants
Insects will eat up your plants and won’t stop unless you put an end to it. If your plants start dying or experiencing bad health, its potentially due to little pests and bugs munching on them.
Signs your Garden Is Suffering from Insects
Holes in Leaves
When it comes to your outdoor plants, holes throughout the leaves is a common sign of an infestation. Insects will chew on the leaves creating a bunch of holes that range in size, based on the bug.
You can tell who might be behind this, depending on the size of the hole. If it’s smaller, it’s most likely a result of aphids and spider mites. These little pests love to suck the sap from the leaves, extracting the juices from the plant. Besides holes, they also often create a clear, sticky substance that’s known as “honeydew.” As for larger holes, this usually means the damage came from caterpillars or earwigs. If only the edges of the leaf have been chewed on, creating a scallop, this is from weevils.
Discolored Leaves
If the leaves on your plants or in your garden have some discoloration, this might be from bugs like thrips, spider mites, aphids, and scale insects that are eating away at the plant. Yellowish or black spots are a result of the plant’s nutrients decreasing, making it difficult to produce chlorophyll (which is what gives a plant its green color). A streak of silver is what thrips can also leave behind, and white spots are just mealybugs that have a white fuzzy body that can be mistaken for discoloration.
Stunted Plant Growth
Your garden plants may face different issues that affect their growth, and insects could be one of those. Since they eat plants and suck the sap, this weakens the plant and wastes its energy on healing itself, rather than on growth. Once they are eating away, the problem will likely keep increasing and leave you with a dead plant or no growth. It’s no fun to have your fresh plant completely disappear. Mealybugs, scale insects, and whiteflies are common instigators behind this problem.
Wilting or Drooping Plants
Sometimes insects are the cause of wilting or drooping leaves from sucking the sap right out of the poor plant. Aphids and scale insects are typically the ringleaders of plants that wilt and look dried out. Even though leaves falling off a plant here and there is normal, infestations can make leaves that look healthy drop.
What to do After You Spot These Signs?
No matter how frustrating or hopeless these troublesome insects can make you feel, there’s still hope! For milder cases, you can try your own insect removal tactics, but you should contact professionals to dodge a more serious issue.
The Yard Butler can help you with this, since we offer services that eliminate a variety of pests and bugs, so you don’t have to worry about it. We can eliminate earwigs, ants, boxelder bugs, wasps, moths, small rodents, almost any type of spider, and so much more.
We recommend doing insecticide treatments quarterly to keep your home safe, save you money, and to keep you feeling comfortable. Investing in this regularly will tremendously benefit you and your home, and requires minimal effort on your end!