Total Landscape Care Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/335708
chemical care S ince 2010, the United States has seen its share of hot summers: the kind of summers that rewrite records. With the exception of 2013, each year earned a spot in the Top 5 warmest summers on record, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration statistics. In the Midwest, these consecutive record-breaking temperatures took their toll in an unexpected way. "Around here, that's not something we're used to," says Jeremy Turner, president of Lawn Doctor of Mid County-St. Charles, Missouri, of the ex- treme summers. "By 2012, we were seeing a lot of damage on turf. There were zoysiagrass lawns all over town that were absolutely destroyed. People thought it was drought." Drought seemed to be a likely enough culprit, paving the way for what Turner suspected were chinch bugs, which, in turn, made turf susceptible to disease. With a little digging, so to speak, he was able to help uncover the real problem: hunting billbugs. And just like that, the region had an emerging pest problem. Root of the problem Billbugs are no stranger to the Midwest. The bluegrass billbug is well established as an insect pest there. Until 2012, though, the hunting billbug was thought to reside primarily in the Southeast, according to Lee Miller, Ph.D., assistant professor of turfgrass pathology at the University of Missouri. So when zoysia began to decline throughout the state, hunting billbugs weren't on anyone's radar. Considered a "no- to low-maintenance turf," zoysiagrass didn't have a long list of usual suspects for this kind of decline. "People thought it was drought. They thought it was anything but billbugs," Turner says. When a client called on him for help with a zoy- sia lawn, Turner could see the turf was diseased. And because there was damage near the curb and along the driveway, he had good reason to believe chinch bugs were involved. During that call, the client asked Turner if the problem could be some- thing called zoysia decline, which prompted Turner to email Miller at the University of Missouri. "Although decline can be a legitimate disease issue on zoysia, the term is often utilized when the cause of the damage is unknown," Turner says. Miller happened to be in town and offered to take a look at the client's lawn. When Miller arrived, he began looking at the turf stolons, which were hollow. "That was the front-end of people fi guring out what was causing all the destruction on the lawns here, and I just happened to be present for it," Turner says. Make no mistake Miller's specialty is in fungal diseases on turfgrass, 16 To t a l L a n d s c a p e C a r e . c o m J U LY 2 014 — LEE MILLER "Hunting billbug damage may be the most-often in warm-season turfgrass." misdiagnosed problem