Sirhornsalot
**The Official Horn Sports Landscaper and Landscap
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- Nov 6, 2013
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The Chinch Bug Cometh!
Devastating insect thrives on your lawn during extreme heat, dry conditions
There is a quiet crisis taking place in Texas lawns. Its quiet because most folks have no idea why their lawns are slowly turning brown.
Most assume it’s related to the extreme heat we’ve seen over the past two months. In a way yes, in a way, no. The heat is causing it because Chinch bugs thrive in high-heat, dry conditions. But grass does fine in heat, as long as it gets proper watering.
You cannot explain away why one square foot of turf can be perfectly green while right next to it, browning turf. That tells you its not a heat problem and its not a sprinkler problem.
What is taking place is really pretty predictable. Chinch bugs, which pose a challenge to Texas lawns each and every year, are thriving right now because climate conditions here make that possible this summer. Chinch bugs are very small, hard to see with the naked eye. They feed on the moisture in your turf until that moisture is gone. You’ll find their damage in the hottest spots of the lawn, where full sun is abundant and commonly next to concrete, metal or stone where it heats up even more because those materials radiate the heat they absorb.
Sick creatures, really, for that reason alone. Lol
For this reason (heat), we commonly see their appearance from mid to late summer. They appeared earlier this year because June was filled with 100-degree heat, paving the way for their early emergence.
Chinch bug damage, above
Their damage can be extensive, many times consuming an entire lawn within a few short weeks. They will feed on any type of lawn whether it be St Augustine, Zoysia or Bermuda. Bermuda is the only one of those three which is native to our area, so Bermuda tends to rebound much better than the other two. With Zoysia or St Augustine, you may have to consider re-sodding the damaged areas once summer is over.
The damage you can observe shows that this is so bad that will rival that of the summer of 1980. Almost every neighborhood in the Dallas-Ft Worth Metroplex has a chinch problem.
What is a Chinch bug? How do I know I have them?
Chinch bugs are hard to spot using the naked eye. Fully grown adult specimens will only be 3/16 inches long. You can spot them in suspected chinch activity areas by using a magnifying glass – or – knock out both ends of a coffee can, tap into the ground by about 1/4 inch, and fill can with soapy water. Whatever chinch bugs are in that small area will float to the top of the soapy water.
The coffee can with soapy water method is an easy way to detect Chinch Bugs.
You can also use a small vacuum cleaner, running it over an area that looks to be suffering from Chinch bugs. Once you do a square foot or so, empty the contents of the vacuum onto a cloth. You should be able to observe any Chinch bugs the vacuum picked up.
But Chinch bugs are easiest to detect by the damage they create. In St Augustine lawns in particular, you will notice that an area of the lawn slowly stops growing while surrounded by grass that keeps growing. This is early stage Chinch infestation. Slowly a brown area will appear as the Chinch extract the moisture from the grass plants. They prefer to feed on the base of the grass where lateral runners/stolons commonly sprout from.
Adult Chinch bugs are black with white wings and each wing has a triangular mark at the edges. Younger Chinch have a reddish-orange or almost bronze hue, have white stripes, and don’t have wings.
The dead spots that begin to appear in the lawn occur when there are at least 25 or more Chinch bugs at work in that area.
What do I do to stop them?
A commonly used insecticide chemical – Bifenythryn, is what most use to kill the Chinch bugs. It is best used in liquid form so that it can be sprayed onto the turf from above the surface. Granualar products work from the surface of the soil, not on the blades where the Chinch Bugs are often found. So the liquid treatment is the most effective.
If you are not confident in your ability to do this, please seek the help of a professional.
Chemical control of Chinch bugs is the fastest way to eradicate them. Bifenyrthryn is a “contact kill” chemical, meaning the wet product must come into contact with the target insect or it won’t work. This is another reason the liquid spray works so well. Once the product has dried, it is no longer effective.
Always follow the instructions on the labels of the chemicals you use. Understand that you may have to treat your lawn several times if your neighbors’ lawns also have this issue and because there may have been eggs that will hatch.
Chinch bugs can be spread by lawn mowers. Lawn services will transport them from lawn to lawn inside their mower wells, if they fail to blow out those mower wells after each mow. A homeowner who only mows his own lawn can spread them to different parts of the lawn the same way. The spinning blade in the mower well creates a vacuum, sucking the Chinch bug up from beneath the blade level.
Is there an organic option?
Diatomaceous Earth is one method that will kill them. It is made from ground up fossil material and has sharp, microscopic particles which will pierce the bodies of most insects. All they have to do is touch it in some way for it to become effective. Application is not easy. You would need to spread it across the damaged area and at least a 10-inch perimeter of the damaged area.
DE kills insects by dehydrating them slowly over 1-3 days.
DE that is left behind is effective until it is made wet by sprinklers or rain. Buy food-grade DE, not swimming pool grade. Its safe for humans and pets to be around.
Get good advice
The most common and unfortunately fatal mistake is when a homeowner mis-diagnoses his Chinch problem. Some will say its just heat stress on the lawn. One person I know was told it was lawn fungus. Lawn fungus doesn’t become a problem until Fall, when our nights become longer and cooler and our days grow shorter. But with 100-degree temperatures and literally no humidity, there’s just no chance of it happening.
So they are led to treat issues (or not) that aren’t in play and still lose their lawn investment. Seek advice from the right people, those who work with turf a lot.
How do Chinch bugs find my lawn?
They will commonly enter your lawn from another nearby lawn. But the biggest factor is when your lawn is in distress. Your lawn becomes distressed, for example, when you are mowing the lawn too short in high heat conditions. The blade must be raised to at least 3.5 to 4 inches during summer. Predator insects pick up on the distress and flock to the location.
Dull mower blades will also cause stress. Make sure your blade is always sharp and never cut more than 1/3 of the grass blade when you mow.
An abundance of thatch in the lawn can also cause predator insects to come. If your thatch has become thick, simply spread some compost over it to get it broken down (and feed the lawn at the same time).
