Chinch bugs warning for St. Augustine
Even as a teenager I took a lot of pride in our St. Augustine lawn there on the east side of College Station back in the late 1950s. When I saw the story from May Del Flagg, garden editor of the Houston Post one Saturday morning telling about a new pest that would be threatening St. Augustine lawns, I took notice. Sure enough, they showed up in College Station just a year or two later.
To this day St. Augustine remains my lawngrass of choice. For most of Texas it’s the most shade-tolerant lawngrass. I like its bright green, crisp look in the summer, and as a flowerbed gardener, I like the fact that I can get its runners out of my plantings. Unlike bermuda, it produces no rhizomes (underground runners) that are so hard to pull out. Many of us also have a real issue with allergies with bermuda. I changed to St. Augustine for that reason as much as any other.
But back to the chinch bugs. Here are the relevant facts you’ll want to remember.
• They will always show up in the hottest, sunniest parts of your yard – never in a shady location.
• They will show up in the same parts of your yard every year, usually starting in July and running through mid-September.
• Impacted turf will look dry, but watering won’t help. The grass will look just as dry the next morning.
• The impacted area, if you take no action, will get larger quickly.
• To confirm the chinch bugs, part the grass with your fingers and look for the BB-sized insects. They’ll be easiest to spot at the interface of healthy grass and dying turf. They move outward as the grass dries and dies.
• They are black with irregular white diamonds on their backs and they move about freely.
• Mixed in with the adults you will find small red nymphs.
• “Driving a coffee can into the ground and filling it with water to see if chinch bugs are floating” is a joke in most Texas soils. Plus, the St. Augustine runners are almost impenetrable as well. Use your fingers and eyes to diagnose the problem.
• Apply an insecticide, granular (my preference if I’m doing the applying myself) or liquid, labeled for control of chinch bugs. Apply it to the entire portion of the yard where the impacted patches have appeared. Your local Texas Certified Nursery Professional will have good options and can help with application instructions.
• Many years, only one application will be needed per summer, but make it as soon as you confirm the presence of the bugs. They can kill large parts of a yard within just a few days.