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Tampa Chinch Bugs   arrow

It’s Summertime in the Sunshine State. This could be a great period for your lawn. Extended sunlight and usually more allowed watering. Expect to see sprinklers and hear mowers for the better part of this season. There’s another issue, though, and that’s the stress that summer places on your lawn. With extra sunshine comes extra heat, and that can damage or hamper your lawn’s natural immunity to pests and disease. And today, we’ll be talking about one of the more unforgiving lawn pests. The Tampa chinch bugs are going to be the focus of today’s article.

This pest may be small, but can do horrific damage to your lawn. They thrive on dryness and live and breed in hot and sunny environments.

Tampa Chinch Bugs: Overview

To start, we’ll go over a few signs that your lawn may have been clinched. If you spot large, dead patches of sod in your lawn that’s usually a pretty good tell. It may be a disease too, mind you, but Tampa chinch bugs feeding damage begins with patches of yellow grass and eventually progresses to fully dead spots in the turf. These guys are known to plague turf grass across the whole country, and there’s a species for every climate. Basically, if you live in the U.S., including Florida, these guys are a risk you may face.

Grass attacked by this pest takes on an instantly striking look. It appears that patches are suffering from drought. If you see this happen alongside your driveways and sidewalks, that’s another big tell. The grass blades wilt, turn yellow-brown, and then dry out and die.

One method you can use for reliable identification is pretty simple. It’s known as the tin can method. What you do is start by taking an empty tin can and cutting out both sides, making it into a kind of tube. Then you put one end of the tube into the ground on the dead patch. After, you fill it with water and keep it filled for about ten minutes. If you have Tampa chinch bugs in your grass, they’ll start floating up to the surface. You may also see their young, called nymphs. The nymphs range from pink to red and have a white stripe across their midsection.

What do chinch bugs look like?

Well, if we’re honest, visual identification of this bug is difficult. They’re no longer than half a centimeter, or a sixth of an inch. In large populations, oddly, their smell is pretty noticeable. The damage they cause occurs in dry, stressed grass during the peak months of summer. And that damage is caused by both the adults and young of this species, and both have that same stench when crushed- similar to a stink bug.

Fully grown Tampa chinch bugs have black bodies and folded wings. The nymphs, as mentioned above, range from pink to brick red with a white band across their back. Adults winter in the grass, and reproduce in spring. A single female can lay over five hundred eggs, which become voracious young in the summer. So like with any pest insect, prevention is much cheaper than a cure when you have a population established.

Dry grass with heavy thatch is very attractive to these insects. The worst activity occurs starting in June and moving through August. In high infestation areas, you may find a hundred to two hundred chinch bugs per square foot. This, obviously, wreaks havoc on the grass.

Prevention is key!

Like I mentioned above, preventing chinch bugs is much more cost-effective than removing chinch bugs. The best thing you can do for your lawn is to mow it at the maximum recommended height. Constantly mowing your lawn all the way down to the lowest allowed length is going to stress it horrifically, and this makes all sorts of pests and diseases job’s easier to settle in. A healthy grass has a slight natural immunity to these things, whereas damage and stressed grass does not.

And when it comes to fertilizing, make sure not to overdo it. Overfertilizing with nitrogen-heavy mixes can lead to more damage. Chinch bugs actually prefer grass that’s got an overabundance of nitrogen, so make sure to use small amounts during the summertime. Also, consider slow-release fertilizers so that all your grass doesn’t get that nitrogen at once.

Also, make sure to regularly water your lawn. As I mentioned at the start of the article, this is a bug that prefers warm, dry, arid soil. Keeping your lawn well-watered, especially during the summer months, is one of the best defenses you can have against this grass-munching pest. Chinch bugs reproduce rapidly and can develop resistance to insecticides very quickly. So self-applying pesticides will not only be ineffective but there’s a chance that you’ll create a resistant strain of chinch bug that’s that much harder to kill when all’s said and done.

If you’re interested in some old-school bio-warfare, you have some options to. Ladybugs and lacewings are effective at keeping populations of this pest down, but make sure to be careful whenever you introduce a new animal or insect into the ecosystem.

What to do about a chinch bug infestation?

Alright, now we’re down to brass tacks. You’ve done the tin can trick, you’ve tried your best to keep and maintain a healthy lawn, but you still have this pest gnawing away your turf. This means you have a full-on infestation. And though they will die down in activity over the winter, you can expect these bugs to be right back the next summer.

At this point, you need to contact a trusted professional to deal with your Tampa chinch bugs. And try to find one that uses natural methods, as I mentioned above these insects reproduce so rapidly that they will develop fast resistance to chemical pesticides. Not only that, but chemical pest control has been long since proven to be risky for your health, the health of your lawn, and the health of your family.