For the most part, hollies are extremely hardy, suffering from few pests or diseases. In fact, most problems that do occur are usually associated with other factors, such as environmental conditions. However, pests damaging holly bushes can happen so it’s important to become familiar with this common one for help in prevention as well as treatment.

Holly Scale insects can be found feeding on the back sides of the leaves of hollies. These sucking insects use a needle-like mouth-part to pierce leaves and drink the sugary sap inside. Scale insect droppings are sugary and drip onto the upper surfaces of leaves below. A black fungus called sooty mold grows on the droppings. It is the secretion from a pest known as scale that releases a sticky substance that dirt sticks to, causing the black fungus-like appearance. The scale pest can be treated with a contact or systemic insecticide as well as organic treatments.

To reduce insecticide use, our lawn pest team at The Master’s Lawn Care will use horticultural oils in the cooler months to control this common landscape pest. For proper control, it is critical to apply the oil spray over every surface of the plant. If the insects are on the underside of the leaves and the oil is only applied to the upper surface, it will have no effect on them. Because scale insects are difficult to kill, one or two follow-up applications should be made after the first one.

In the warmer months, the best method is systemic insecticides that are soaked into the plant and kill the scale as they Feast on its nutrients.

Check out our video for more information on Holly Scale:
Is Black Sooty Mold a Pest on my Holly Bush?

If you come across a Gainesville Lawn Pest, please don't hesitate to let us know if we can help. Contact our office at (352) 378-5296 and one of our technicians would be glad to assist you!

Nutsedge, also called nutgrass, is an aggressive weed that often plagues lawns in the wet seasons like we have been in. There are several different varieties of nutsedge, and they're all perennial weeds in the sedge family that regrow each year and reproduce in a manner that makes them difficult to manage.

Nutsedge outbreaks often start in moist, poorly drained lawn areas, where they quickly develop into large colonies. Their extensive root systems may reach up to 4 feet deep. Once established, these weeds can tolerate drought, but grow best in the damp areas of the lawn.

Identifying Nutsedge:
Shape- Nutsedge weeds, like all sedges (grasslike plants), have a triangular stem that can be felt in your hands. The stem of the sedge feels like it has 3 sides or 3 points, much like a triangle.

"Sandspurs" - Many Floridians mistake these weeds for sandspurs, because of their green spiky flowers that resemble sandspurs. However, they are not sharp and are soft enough to crush between your fingertips. True sandspurs are brown and very tough on fingers.

Roots- Nutsedge has roots, called rhizomes, that can reach 8-14 inches below ground. Rhizomes will grow horizontally under the soil and emerge out of the soil to form a new sedge plant. This means multiple sedges may be connected by one series of rhizomes.

How to control nutsedge:
First, and this is very important - Don’t pull it.  Most of the time pulling nutsedge doesn’t work because it has two nuts attached to the roots.  You can pull up the first one but if you don’t get the second one, and you almost never can get it, you usually end up with it splitting and getting even more nutsedge.  In fact, nutsedge reminds me of the stories of fishermen who tried to get rid of starfish by cutting them up and throwing them back in the sea.  What happens when you cut up starfish?  The pieces each turn into a starfish and you end up with a lot more starfish.  That’s pretty much what happens when you pull nutsedge in Gainesville landscapes

In terms of how to get rid of nutsedge, you will need to implement specialty post-emergent control products. These products are specifically targeted to nutsedge and won’t damage the rest of your grass. Sesgehammer and Pro-Sedge are two of the most common - but during the rainy season just can bairly stunt the growth.

Due to its hardiness and the fact that it grows rapidly, nutsedge will require repeated controls to knock back. And even when you successfully achieve this in one season, it may return.

This is why it’s important that nutsedge control is part of an ongoing and comprehensive weed control program. You simply can’t let your guard down with a persistent weed like nutsedge.

If you come across a Gainesville Lawn Weed, please don't hesitate to let us know if we can help. Contact our office at (352) 378-5296 and one of our technicians would be glad to assist you!

Short on time?
Watch our YouTube video that explains this yard pest!

Have you noticed black sooty mold on your landscape plants?

That powdery, black residue on your landscape plants probably isn't doing them any harm, but the same can't be said for the pests that cause it. The black coating is called sooty mold, and it's a sign your plants are under attack!

Insects, such as aphids and scales, are attracted to plants and will suck the leaves for plant juices. As they digest the plant nutrients, they excrete a very sugary substance that we call honeydew.

The first sign that you have a sucking insect problem will be very shiny or oily-looking leaves. These leaves will feel sticky from the sugary honeydew. You will usually notice ants trailing up the tree to get the sugar, and you might notice a lot of wasps and bees flying around the tree also. If you park your car under the tree, you will also see the honeydew dripping on your hood.

The sugar not only attracts other insects, but it also attracts sooty mold, which can live and grow on the honeydew. You might see a white fence under the tree or plant turn black, as well as patio furniture or even your car if honeydew is falling on them!

Although it looks unsightly, sooty mold isn't harmful to human health. If you touch or rub leaves, stems, or bark that has that characteristic black coating, you're left with dark smudges on your fingers.

You'll probably also feel the sticky honeydew that the mold is growing on. But there's nothing to worry about. Just wash your hands with warm water and soap to remove the black marks.

It is easier to prevent sooty mold than to control it, and that means starting early.

Sooty mold is really an insect problem, and if you control the insects, you will not have sooty mold. You have heard that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It applies here. The scale pest can be treated with a contact or systemic insecticide as well as organic treatments.

To reduce insecticide use, our team uses horticultural oils in the cooler months to control this common landscape pest. In the warmer months, the best method is systemic insecticides that are soaked into the plant and kill the scale as they feast on its nutrients.

If you come across this lawn pest, please don't hesitate to let us know! We are ready to help. Contact our office at (352) 378-5296 or (904) 913-5296 or fill out our form at the top of the page, our technicians would be glad to assist you!

Mosquitoes are an unfortunate fact of life in Florida. Nothing is worse than being in a backyard full of mosquitoes, especially since mosquitoes aren’t just annoyingly painful, they also carry many life-threatening diseases. To prevent your yard from being overrun with mosquitoes, try these five tips.

1. Remove Standing Water
Female mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water. The eggs hatch into larvae about three days later, and about 12 days after that, adults emerge and fly away. Considering that each female can lay up to 400 eggs and the life cycle is complete in about two weeks, you can see why mosquito populations can increase so quickly. Reducing the amount of standing water around your home will minimize breeding sites and reduce the number of mosquitoes. Some places to look include children's toys in the yard, clogged rain gutters, tree holes, old tires, discarded cans, and the saucers of your outdoor flower pots.

After eliminating the yard's water collectors, ensure your lawn has functional Gainesville drainage. Eliminate wet spots in your yard that are prone to flooding or where stagnant water collects. You can eliminate these areas through the use of gravel, stone pavers, or more advanced landscape solutions like adjusting the pitch of your yard or installing a French drain.

2. Keep the grass cut and plant growth under control
Like how mosquitoes need water to breed, they like to live in an overrun yard. Tallgrass, plants, and shrubs are where mosquitoes go to rest, relax and play. Getting rid of standing water will prevent them from breeding, but if you have a standing mosquito problem, maintaining your landscape will help eliminate the existing population.

3. Use Scents to Repel Mosquitoes
Lavender, citrus, basil, lemongrass, peppermint, and geraniums are fragrant plants that some people swear by as deterring mosquitoes from hanging around. However, you should be aware that the science on this is not settled. While some gardeners swear by them, these plants have not been found in a lab to provide a repellent effect. Still, thanks to the pleasant smell they make for humans, they're not a bad thing to have in your Gainesville landscape design anyway.

4. Attract natural predators
Predators can’t completely eradicate your issue if you’re overrun with mosquitoes, but if you’re just getting a few unwanted critters here and there, attracting them is worth a shot.

Many birds are natural mosquito predators, including purple martins, waterfowl, swallows, and migratory songbirds. Setting up bird feeders is a solid step in attracting these birds. Installing a bat house can also help. Bats eat up mosquitoes, but you may not want to attract bats near your home.

If you have a pond, you can benefit from predators like goldfish, koi, and red-eared slider turtles.

Mosquitoes also fall prey to other insects—some you’d be happy to see in your garden and others, not so much. Spiders eat mosquitoes when they fly into their webs and dragonflies gobble mosquitoes right up.

5. Start a Professional Mosquito Control Program
While you may find some measure of success with DIY methods, if you’re dealing with tons of mosquitoes, you need to call in a professional pest control company. Professional pest control companies have the expertise to kill mosquitoes at all stages of the life cycle and are more knowledgeable about safety practices when applying chemicals.

A Mosquito pesticide treatment offered by a company like Gainesville's Mosquito Joe can help to greatly reduce the mosquitoes living directly around your house. Because of their high humidity requirement, mosquitoes like damp and shady areas to shelter in. Regularly treating these areas with an appropriately labeled pesticide can kill mosquitoes and make it impossible for them to breed.

A pesticide with a long-lasting residual effect that will continue to kill mosquitoes for weeks even after the chemical has dried. Multiple applications will probably be required throughout the summer season.

Areas that don't get a lot of sun should be treated regularly. These are the areas where mosquitoes like to rest during the day when it’s hottest, so treating them with a pesticide will greatly reduce the number of bugs in your yard.

With the right actions in your lawn, you can have fewer bug bites and more peace of mind. Call us today at (352) 378-5296 if we can help you with your drainage, pest control, gutters, or landscaping in any way!

Doveweed is an aggressive summer annual turfgrass weed. Its long leaves resemble St. Augustine grass in appearance, so this weed can grow unnoticed for some time. But doveweed doesn't just invade St. Augustine grass, it also takes hold in Bermuda, hybrid Bermuda, and zoysia grass.

Not only can doveweed be an annoyance to people who are trying to grow turfgrass, it can also cause serious contact dermatitis for dogs that come in contact with the weed.

Doveweed thrives in overly moist soils because of poor soil drainage or frequent rainfall and irrigation, combined with lack of sunlight. In these wet areas, homeowners may not realize this grass-like weed is present until large patches of turfgrass have been smothered out. In summer, doveweed produces small, 3-petaled, lavender flowers that, when in bloom, become more noticeable in the lawn.

Once the weeds are established, they grow vigorously. When managing doveweed, use an integrated management approach. As always, a healthy lawn is the best defense. Healthy turfgrass can outcompete weeds. Pre Emergent herbicides can help; be sure to read the label first and closely follow the directions.

If these lawn weeds are caught early enough and you prefer to DIY your lawn weed control program, reducing irrigation and hand-pulling is the most effective way to keep these weeds from spreading. However, they do spread rapidly so it will be a good bit of elbow grease to get it under control.

If you are on a lawn program, controlling these weeds takes attention early in the season - because once they get established it will be a battle.

If you're tired of fighting the battle for weed control in your Gainesville lawn, call our office at (352) 378-LAWN or fill out our online form so we can schedule a meeting to discuss how we can help!

We have already seen activity with the recent rains, this pest is in season and looking for lawns to feed on!

Sod webworms are the larvae of lawn moths. They live in the root level of your lawn and munch up the grass leaves. They can kill an entire lawn in a matter of days! When the weather turns hot, patches of your grass may start to turn brown. If you see little moths flying above your grass at dusk, and the brown patches start to get larger, you could have a sod webworm problem.

Look for saucer-sized brown patches where your lawn is driest. Upon closer inspection, these areas will have a grazed or scalped appearance. The centers of the patches may have been eaten away and replaced by weeds. At root level, you'll see small white tubes made of silky web. At dusk, you might even see the worms themselves. They're about 1/4 - 3/4 inch long.

Under heavy sod webworm infestation, large areas of turf can be scalped and even killed during periods of summer heat and drought. While sod webworm larvae are active from early spring through fall, the most serious turfgrass injury usually occurs in mid to late summer.

The most severe damage usually shows up when the temperature is hot and there is a lot of moisture (rain and humidity). In fact, most sod webworm damage is mistaken for someone mowing prnweedeating areas of the lawn shorter than the rest (which is the webworm eating the new growth off the grass blades)

We have created a couple of videos that can help you identify and defend your lawn!
How to identify sod webworms and how to control them
Why do I have Moths in my Gainesville Florida lawn?

Professional Gainesville lawn spraying is the best solution for controlling sod webworms. Retail pesticides sold in Home Improvement stores can also be effective solutions for killing sod webworms, but they do take 3-4 applications to break the webworms life cycle, and you can damage your ecosystem if not used in accordance with the label.

If you're tired of fighting the battle for pest control in your Gainesville lawn, call our office at (352) 378-LAWN or fill out our online form so we can schedule a meeting to discuss how we can help!

Chinch bugs are small pests that can cause a large amount of damage to your lawn. Chinch bugs suck the moisture out of grass blades, then replace that moisture with a poison that kills the grass. Lawns that have been affected by chinch bugs appear to have drought-like symptoms, including yellow, brown, or dead grass. Chinch bugs are most prevalent from late spring to mid-fall and are typically found in St. Augustine lawns, although they are occasionally found in Zoysia yards as well.

What do Chinch Bugs do to a lawn?
They destroy by inserting their razor-sharp beaks into a blade of grass and then sucking out its natural fluids, causing the grass to dehydrate and die. Any time you find yellow patches of grass that turn brown and die—especially in sunny spots during hot weather—it's probably chinch bug damage. The damage caused by chinch bugs appears quickly in hot weather. With most of the damage in open, sunny areas, this may be mistaken for drought damage.

How to tell if you have a problem?
Chinch bugs give off an offensive odor when crushed. If your lawn has a noticeable odor when walked on, you could have a large infestation.
Spread the grass and check the soil surface for red nymphs or black adult chinch bugs. These bugs avoid the light and may hide in soil crevices. Chinch can also terrorize a neighborhood by going from lawn to lawn, attacking any lawn that isn’t on a lawn pest program.

How can you get rid of chinch bugs?
Managing this pest begins with proper lawn care. By keeping thatch to a minimum, for example, you reduce chinch bug numbers and make other control methods more effective. Thatch is the layer of dead plant material found between the green tops of the grass plant and the soil below. It provides a protective home for chinch bugs and chemically binds with many insecticides, making such controls less effective.

To control chinch bugs in Gainesville yourself, there are products you can buy at local home improvement stores. We recommend using the liquid products and buying a sprayer, though, as the granular products aren't nearly as effective. The granular lawn insect control products need the perfect amount of irrigation that won't dilute the product down beyond effectiveness, but also not under-irrigate where the granule doesn't dissolve.

If you're tired of fighting the battle for pest control in your Gainesville lawn, call our office at (352) 378-LAWN or fill out our online form so we can schedule a meeting to discuss how we can help!

In the late winter, we talked about the best defense for lawn weeds being pre-emergent weed controls (before the seeds germinate).  As we now are heading into late spring, the second-best time to get them under control is while they are still young and juvenile. Crabgrass is the best example of this. If you do not get it under control in spring, you will be having to hand pull it in summer because it will be too developed to control.

Prevention:
Applying a quality pre-emergence herbicide according to label instructions before soil temperatures get too warm is the best way to prevent crabgrass. Of course, having a thick, healthy lawn can win, but it is tough. A properly applied pre-emergence herbicide labeled for crabgrass should prevent the weed from growing throughout the summer. Keep in mind that even the best pre-emergence herbicides will lose their effectiveness later in the summer.

Late in the game?
While it is true that the best way to treat crabgrass is to prevent it, all is not lost. There are post-emergence, selective herbicides labeled for crabgrass, but it gets tricky. Crabgrass is very similar in structure to the desired turf grass in which it grows. Therefore, proper application of these products is very important. Never apply if the temperature is outside the range listed on the label. Applying these products incorrectly may result in damaging your lawn.

If you're tired of fighting the battle for weed control in Gainesville lawns, call our office at (352) 378-LAWN or fill out our online form so we can schedule a meeting to discuss how we can help!

The old saying "April showers bring May flowers" was said by someone who didn't live near Gainesville Florida. In our area, April is consistently the driest time of year. It’s when the spring season starts and Gainesville yards begin to heat up, but the summer afternoon storms and humidity haven't come yet.

This dry weather also brings in a past "Pest of the Month," which is Drought Stress. Although the word 'pest' is typically used to describe an insect such as chinch bugs or webworms, the term is actually used to describe anything that is 'pestering' the lawn, and this month it is drought stress.

As water becomes limited, your turfgrass will give off signs that it’s in need of watering. If you spot these warnings in advance, you can alter your sprinkler schedule to avoid drought stress and keep your lawn green and healthy.

Here are a few warning signs to keep in mind:

Color:
If the color shade of your grass is just grayish and lacks color, especially in full sun areas, it could be suffering from drought stress. Unless you take action, it could turn brown and die sooner rather than later.

Footprints:
Walk around in your lawn and take a moment to turn around, look at your path, and search for footprints. If you see prints clearly laid out in your grass, you are likely dealing with a drought stress problem.

Shaded Areas:
Look at the shaded areas of your lawn. Is the grass healthy and green in those areas? What about in the areas of your lawn exposed to the sun? If there is an obvious difference between the two—with the sunny areas showing patches and brown spots—this is a definite sign of drought damage, because the shaded areas are more protected from the heat.

Folded Blades:
The best way to identify drought stress in turf is finding leaves folded in half. (A seen in the image above)

This issue is commonly found in the sunniest areas of your lawn, and the folded blades are actually trying to reduce their sun exposure to protect itself from further stress.

To avoid these issues, make sure to service your irrigation system and bump settings back up for spring, even if it's just for a short time to get your lawn through the dry spell.
You can find more information about Gainesville Irrigation Settings here.

The biggest mistake homeowners make with irrigation settings is assuming they can be "set and forget." This couldn't be further from the truth. Irrigation systems should be cut back drastically in winter, turned up for our dry season and to help redevelop strong roots in spring, and then average out in summer as the afternoon storms and humidity come in to play. Leaving the settings constant all year will set you, your lawn, and your water bill up for failure.

When your lawn shows signs of drought stress, we also recommend mowing holding off on mowing or mowing at a higher height than normal, this will help the grass hold moisture and color.

If you need assistance with your lawn’s irrigation and fertilization needs, The Master’s Lawn Care can help. Please contact us today for a free lawn consultation to help develop a plan custom-tailored to the specific needs of your lawn.

Related Reading:
5 Tips to Avoid Drought Stress
How to Change Your Irrigation Timer Settings
Tips for Watering Your Gainesville Lawn

Have you noticed a black moldy coating on the leaves of your holly plant? This isn’t mold, it’s actually a symptom of our pest of the month. Holly Scale. Your hollies have an infestation of one of the many kinds of scale insects. Scale can’t digest all the sap they suck from leaves so they secrete honeydew, which allows sooty mold to grow on leaves. The honeydew accumulates on the foliage and can cause it to look shiny and feel sticky.

This rich food source does not go unnoticed. Ants, wasps and other insects may be attracted to the sweet honeydew. Even more common is the growth of fungal organisms that produce an unattractive black coating on the leaves called sooty mold. These fungi feed on the honeydew and do not attack or directly damage the plant, but the appearance of sooty mold is often the gardener’s first noticeable sign of trouble.

Light infestations of scale can be scraped off by hand or infested branches pruned out. Promptly dispose of prunings. For heavier infestations, spray with horticultural oil in the early spring to kill adults. An oil spray should be applied before new growth begins to kill both over-wintering adults and eggs.

For proper control, it is critical to apply the oil spray over every surface of the plant. If the insects are on the underside of the leaves and the oil is only applied to the upper surface, it will have no effect on them. Because scale insects are difficult to kill, one or two follow-up applications should be made after the first one. Follow label directions carefully.

If you come across a Gainesville lawn pest or Gainesville, Florida landscape pest, please don't hesitate to let us know if we can help. Contact our office at (352) 378-5296 and one of our technicians would be glad to assist you. We are a locally owned and operated lawn pest control service proudly located in Gainesville, Florida.