You just noticed that mole crickets are eating up your lawn. Are
you ready for the bad
news? You just missed the best time to kill them.

“If you’ve got a mole cricket problem and haven’t treated your
lawn for them yet,
you’ve got problems,” Will Hudson said.

Mole crickets are soil insects and are major pests of turf
grasses in the coastal plain –
basically the southern half of the state.

An entomologist with the University of Georgia Extension
Service, Hudson said mole
crickets have just one generation per year. But by now, the new
bugs are getting big.
“And the bigger they are,” he said, “the harder they are to
kill.”

Hudson has two suggestions for people who have missed the best
time to control mole
crickets.

One, plan better next year. “It’s pretty much the same year
after year,” he said. “The
best time to treat mole crickets is around the last week in June
and the first week in
July. That’s when the new generation of insects is still young
and easy to kill.”

Two, be very smart about how you apply chemical treatments for
the mole crickets you
already have.

No, you don’t have to abandon your lawn and hope it survives
this year’s mole
crickets.

“You need to treat for mole crickets right on,” Hudson
said. “You just won’t get the
control you might expect. You may have to treat several times to
knock the population
down as much as you need.”

For most people, he said, that’s mainly a problem of a little
more money and
aggravation. “Homeowners usually have only a few thousand square
feet to treat,” he
said. “If you have to spend $40 to $50 to save your lawn from
mole crickets, that’s not
that big a deal.”

For people with golf courses or recreational turf to treat,
extra treatments can obviously
be more costly.

A key to making the most of mole cricket treatments, whether
they’re late or not, is
water. You may even need to water your lawn before you apply a
chemical.

“Mole crickets don’t like hot, dry conditions,” Hudson
said. “When the soil surface is
dry, they’ll move down deeper, where they’re harder to reach
with any insecticide.”

Most turf insecticides that are applied as liquid sprays have to
be watered in
immediately. “You have to get the chemical into the soil,”
Hudson said. “And once it
dries on the leaf surface it’s hard to do that.”

One of the best products for homeowners, he said, is Orthene.
Mix the wettable
powder as the label directs, and apply it with a hose-end
sprayer.

“Irrigation isn’t as critical with Orthene,” Hudson said. “The
label says you don’t have
to water it in at all. Just apply it with the hose-end sprayer.”
The chemical will get into
the grass and kill mole crickets that feed on it.

There are granular products, he said. The county
extension agent can advise
you on
the best for home use. As a rule, these products still have to
be watered in, but not as
quickly as liquid products.

“You can’t just leave them out there and wait for rain,” he
said. “These products break
down in heat and ultraviolet sunlight. The quicker you get the
chemical off the granule
and into the soil, the better.”

Some retail stores may sell Dursban and diazinon granules for
mole cricket control.
“But these aren’t good mole cricket materials in many
situations,” he said.

If you treat your lawn for mole crickets and the damage
continues, treat again. It may
take several applications. You may knock their numbers back to
acceptable levels the
first time, but don’t count on it.

“Nobody’s taking care of mole cricket problems with one
application,” Hudson said.