Grubs – Do Nothing

Q: For grub control, I like doing nothing, as you recommend on your website, but will they keep eating my fescue roots and come back year after year? If I put down grub-killing chemicals would the lawn be unsafe for kids or dogs?

A: Grubs are “annuals”: they develop from the eggs of beetles like Japanese beetle, chafer beetle, May beetle, etc. Any you find now will hatch into adult beetles early next summer. To answer your question directly, the ones you see now will be gone by next summer. But between now and then their numbers are pretty well controlled by natural means. You may always discover a few when you dig in your landscape but it’s rare for populations to explode in homeowner lawns.