DISEASE & INSECT PRESSURE

There are two major kinds of damage inflicted by insects to growing sod. The first type is consistent of direct injury to the plant. This type of injury usually means the insect is feeding, and physical symptoms include holes in the leaves, chewed edges of the leaves, or signs of insects burrowing in the roots. Although these visual symptoms may indicate an insect issue in your field, it is important that a proper diagnosis takes place for successful problem correction. The second type of damage consists of indirect injury in which the insect does little to no harm to the plant, but transmits a bacterial, viral, or fungal infection into the grass. Some of the many common insects found in sod include chinch bugs, billbugs, mole crickets, the japanese beetle, black grass bugs, fall armyworms, crambus, and cutworms. When plants are under stress inflicted by insect pressure, the plant signals for a physio chemical response. It spends so much of its energy on fixing the issue that has to divert energy from normal or productive growth processes. The biochemical compounds the plant works to produce are usually toxic to the plant as well. With that being said, not only is the plant putting a halt to its productive growth process—it is also dispelling toxic biochemicals that although fix the problem, linger even after the issue is resolved. It is important to understand that a plant’s first response to stress is to look for mineral and carbon nutrition to react to the stress event. However, for the plant to be stressed, the agronomic environment is usually lacking these components in the first place. For this reason, it is important to add nutrients into the soil for the plant to use. Traditional pounds per acre fertilizer does not properly handle plant stress because of the lack of mineral and carbon nutrition in traditional synthetic fertilizers that are required to help combat various stress events continually faced by all plants.