I live in New England, USA.
I had grubs two years ago that damaged about 10% of the lawn.
It has been rainy here the past 30 days.
When should I apply GrubX?
I have lots of moss in some areas and dandelions have been growing.
When should I apply a weeed&feed product?
The worst thing you could do and perhaps have already done is kill the grubs. The soil is naturally imbued with predators and control systems of grubs. I am assuming you might be in the NW with Cranefly grubs? Is this correct?
When you use that grub kill stuff? Next year your lawn will be decimated completely because you not only killed the grubs you killed their controls...to include birds.
I was FORCED to apply grub killer on a landscape of a very rich client. The next year, within a couple of days of spring, every bit of the lawn was gone. We were hired to replace the entire lawn.
Pesticides and chemicals should never be used on your soils, plants, gardens. We start playing around and inserting ourselves into what little ecosystem our properties have left and available we are setting ourselves up for a landscape in a bubble.
Where exactly do you live? Just using the proper maintenance practices for your lawn will prevent ALL PROBLEMS. Because I imagine your lawn to be cool season grass species, you definitely need to learn proper maintenance. I would hate to have warm season grass species for a lawn because there is little way to discourage weeds...and insects.
Mow on HIGH. Mow no shorter than 3 to 3 1/2 inches!! Water deeply and then do not water until you are able to see your footprints on the grass. Then water deeply again...I mean at least 4" to 6" deep. Use a shovel to see how deep yo are watering and change that controller to have longer LAWN watering and use the manual option to water when you see your footprints, until you get a good feel for how long in between waterings can give you a schedule. This takes quite a bit of testing and being involved.
Aerate by pulling plugs out of the soil and let them lie where they fall. ONCE per year. Rent the thing and get your neighbors to join in and pay their part. It is so minuscule and all your neighbors need to do this as well.
Only water and water very deeply down to 4" when you walk on your grass and the blades stay down showing your footprint.
Fertilize at least 4X per season with appropriate fertilizer (early spring, early summer, early fall and early winter). With a balanced fertilizer made for LAWNS. It has to have NPK in the formulation, N being higher in percentage than the phosphorous and potassium. UNTIL the last application before winter. Low low nitrogen!
Check out Dr. Earth's Lawn Fertilizer. I am tough to be impressed with any product but this one made me sit up very straight! One only needs 2 to 3 applications so weight that information when you see the price. And it is worth the few extra bucks!
Always bag your clippings. They are worthless as fertilizer and definitely cause thatch. Those clippings are valuable for the compost pile or dumping an inch or two on weeds. This dang fertilizer comes with valuable bacteria (that eat thatch) and fungi to enliven the soil bed. There are other brands, just check the ingredients. Grins. I used this on commercial projects!
Grubs are always going to be in the lawn during the spring. If you kill them you kill off all of the controlling insects and birds that keep these grubs from ruining any of your lawn. The only time grubs become a major problem is when people try to control grubs with chemicals.
This is what we were taught in Pesticide Licensing Programs. How NOT to ever need to use ANY pesticide (herbicide, miticide, fungicide, pesticide). Prevent. Pesticides are a very lame bandage on problems that could be prevented easily.
If you follow the mowing height, the watering, the fertilizer and the aerating, you WILL never need weed control. Never. Stop using weed control and get that mower raised up to cut your grass (always with brutally sharp clean blades) the proper height. Shades out germinating weed seeds.
Watering deeply and infrequently also promotes your grass and demotes your weeds to ineffective.
We've got lots of information on lawn care. This information is for cool season grass crops, not so much warm season unless you are talking about St. Augustine.
New England is definitely cool season grass. Lucky you!
