HELP!!WORMS ARE EATING MY HOUSE
That’s what the lady said over the phone when she came home from vacation and found millions of fall armyworms (Spodoptera Frugiperda) looking for a new buffet. They had already eaten all the new grass around her pool.
As the name indicates, fall armyworms are most numerous in late summer or early fall. Usually, during late July or early August. There are three or more generations of fall armyworms each year. Occasionally, severe outbreaks occur as early as mid-April. Fall armyworms are susceptible to cold, and are unable to survive even the mildest winters.
You get these little critters every year, but conditions have to be just right to become a problem. They do well in hot dry weather. We get blamed for sending them out on sod all the time. This can happen, but usually they are already in place, waiting for some new, freshly installed bermuda grass to chew on. For some reason they don’t much like the zoysia grasses. (Low standards I guess.)
The adult is a small (1 inch) gray moth that arrives in our area after a southern vacation in the tropics. (Maybe we should build a WALL.) She lives about 2 weeks and deposits hundreds of eggs on the light colored surfaces of trees, fences, and even your car. In two to four days these tiny larvae spin down to the ground and boy are they hungry. A mature armyworm is a little over an inch long and he is light green to black. In a week or so, the worm will mature and burrow into the ground to form a pupae that soon emerges as a moth again. The whole process starts over again and only takes about 30 days for a full cycle.
One way you can control this population explosion is by neutering the female moth. But it’s going to take a long time and some really good eyes. A slightly faster control is by using two brick bats to smash the worms. But the most effective way is to call your lawn care service guy/gal to come and apply some sort of insecticide.If you suspect that you have armyworms you can determine how bad the problem is by pouring some soapy water on the ground. In about five minutes everything living down there will come to the top looking for oxygen. (Kinda like when you used to go to the pool room after school.) If you find 3 or more worms per square foot, you probably need to spray.
It is seldom that there is enough damage to your lawn to cause any long term problems. By the time you see injury and realize that it is not caused by dry weather, the damage is already done. But look on the bright side, you probably won’t have to mow for a while.

-Bob McCurdy