Do You Have a Chinch Bug Invasion?

It’s not only the weather and lawn diseases that affect the health of your grass in the summer. Insects who like to snack on your grass and plantings are also to blame. In the summer, you may notice that areas of your grass have turned yellow and then brown. That’s often caused by insects, and your #1 insect enemies in June and July are chinch bugs.

What’s a Chinch Bug?

Chinch bugs are small insects. In the winter, adult chinch bugs will head somewhere that protects them from the cold and snow, and then in the spring, they mate. New bugs are born in May, and those young chinch bugs are hungry. They’ll pierce blades of grass and then suck the sap out. If the adult insects have had the chance to produce lots of eggs, that will result in more damaged grass. As these bugs grow off the sap in your grass, they will continue to reproduce, and usually more eggs are laid in mid-summer, with another wave coming in August.

Chinch bugs are tiny, and the young ones are red with a white band. Adults are grayish black and have white wings that fold flat over their midsection.

What Does the Grass Look Like?

Once a chinch bug begins to feed on a grass blade, it will change to a yellowish color, then to brown, and will die. Then, the young chinch bugs will move onto another blade. Usually, you’ll see lots of brown grass, with perfectly healthy-looking green blades mixed in. These bugs aren’t picky—they like all kinds of grass. While their destructive phase starts in early summer, it’s not until mid-to-late summer when you may really notice damage to your grass.

Homeowners often confuse chinch-bug infested grass with heat stress. You can turn over the thatch and dirt where you see brown blades, and look to see if you find chinch bugs burrowing in the ground. They’ll move fast because they don’t like sunlight.

How Can You Rid Your Pittsburgh Lawn of Chinch Bugs?

Give Superior Lawn Care a call. We come to your home, find out if your grass is suffering from chinch bug damage, and then we can set you up with our all-season lawn program. It includes an insect control application that protects your grass from chinch bugs and other lawn-destroying insects.

Superior Lawn Care provides full-service lawn care programs for southwestern Pennsylvania, including Indiana, Penn Township, Wexford Murrysville, Greensburg, Peters Township, and Upper St. Clair. Call us today to learn more and to protect your yard from hungry insects.