How to Get Rid of Japanese Beetles

okay what we have here is a classic example of sod that is being utterly destroyed by beetle larvae now when you flip this piece of sod back what you may expect to see when you see beetle larvae are these big honking white grubs okay but I want to show you something that is easy to miss as we look through this soil here what you don't really easily see is where the real infestation lies and I want to show you where that is right here take a look at the difference in size look at these are the these little tiny newly hatched larva are completely and utterly destroying this side and it's almost on an epidemic proportion and you could easily Overlook these here they are in the soil and here they are next to an adult grub that is ready to turn into a beetle there's a big difference and it's they're both easy to overlook now okay so the the beetle larvae absolutely love burrowing beneath the sad for a reason as we peel this back this is the ideal habitat for the grubs it's wet and humid plus it's food source which are these roots you see these tender Roots this entire piece of s should have roots that are growing down and into the subsoil this is the layer that the beetle basically inhabit they don't have to burrow for their food anymore they can just Cruise along this layer picking up on all these juicy little roots that are trying to grow into the subsoil and eating them which is killing the side so as we flip this piece of side back one of the indicators that you see is De Dead Alive Dead Alive very spotty growth in the S that's simply because the Beetles have congregated in this area they've destroyed and decimated everything here and then they move on to the next piece of sod that's why you get this spotty look you may be wondering scratching your head well gol leave you know I have sod but I water it I don't know what's going on flip your side over and look underneath if you don't have a lot of roots growing into the subsoil something's to preventing that from happening look closer as you can tell when you do the side by side comparison of these beetles of these larvae these things have some girth to them and that is a misnomer that's what you may think you're looking for but really what you want to discover are those little bad boys right there those are the ones that you're going to miss look for both of the signs the big ones followed by the little ones those are your indicators that you have SI now the next question you probably have is how do you fix a problem like that simple go to Menards go to Home Depot go to Low's Ace Hardware True Value I don't care where you go they all sell grub control okay it's it's right in the stores the directions are right there what you really want to do is just simply follow the directions but you want to catch it early you want to catch it before this is too late because this side is going to have one heck of a Time coming back after it's been decimated like this now it's it's spotty if you look at this I want you to take a look at this and then I want you to pan up this whole stretch has been SED this is green as can be up in here it's simply because the Beetles haven't gotten up there yet they're working you can actually see where they're working their way up the hill look at the indicators look at the vegetation down by the the um the shoreline there that's where the adults are hanging out out they're eating the taller vegetation they absolutely love tall vegetation they fly in they they lay their eggs their eggs hatch and the eggs start working their way up the hill they prevent that if they put some grub control on this there's still a chance to save the rest of this side so if you have spotty s try to catch it don't be afraid to peel this s back even if it looks as good as this you would never think that this is s but when you peel it back you should see all these little Roots All These Fine Roots under here taking hold look it look at here there's another one right there there's more of them so this side is already beginning the stages of getting infested it can still be saved though