Sod webworms can occur almost anywhere, but are less likely in central parts of the United States.
What they look like: Sod webworms, are the larvae of a buff-colored, night flying moth. The larvae are about 1/2 to 1 inch long gray or light tan caterpillars with black spots on their back. However, you may notice the adult moth first. They flutter over your lawn at night, flying in a crazy zigzag pattern, dropping eggs as they go. If you see a lot of the moths in late spring, you can figure the sod webworm caterpillars are about 10 days to 2 weeks behind.
Damage they do: Sod webworms feed on grass blades, causing small irregular dead patches that gradually expand into larger dead patches. The damage is often most severe in drier parts of the lawn or areas with heavy thatch. Sod webworms attack any type of grass, but bentgrass and Kentucky Bluegrass lawns are particularly susceptible
How you know you have them: Examine the lawn at night with a flashlight (during the day, worms hide in silky, weblined tunnels in the ground, hence the name). You can see the webworms feeding. Small greenish-tan pelletlike droppings and flocks of feeding birds are other signs. You can also examine the thatch layer with a small shovel. Look for the sod webworms in their silken tunnels where they hide during the day. To confirm their presence, soak a section of lawn (about 2 x 2 feet) with soapy water (2 tablespoons of dish soap per gallon of water). The soap brings the sod webworms to the surface in about 5 to 10 minutes. Treat the lawn if you find more than two or three sod webworms per square foot.
What to do about them: First, aerate the lawn to reduce thatch and improve water penetration. Bacillus thuringiensis is the preferred biological control of sod web worms. Predatory nematodes, insecticidal soaps, and pyrenthrins are also effective. If problems are really severe, consider reseeding the lawn with endophytic-treated lawn seed. Diazinon, chlorpyrifos, and carbaryl are traditional chemical controls for sod web worms.
Noon Turf Care offers a Surface Insect Control application to help alleviate this issue if you are seeing sod webworm or moths on your lawn.
Reposted from Lawn Care for Dummies by Lance Wilheim By Matthew Noon Google+
The actual number of ticks present can vary from place to place and year to year. Chart shows when each stage is most prevalent wherever deer ticks are found.
SOURCE: Kirby Stafford III, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/01/lyme-disease-rise-and-controversy-over-how-sick-makes-patients/OT4rCTy9qRYh25GsTocBhL/igraphic.html
Reposted By Matthew Noon Google+
Red Thread
Our lawn technicians have been noticing some signs of Red Thread on properties across the state. From lawns in Boston to lawns in Worcester to lawns in Chelmsford, Noon Turf Care is here to help. Keep an eye out on your property for signs of Red Thread so that proper measures can be made to address this issue. Fungicide applications (red thread grass treatment for red thread disease/fungus) offered by Noon Turf Care can help alleviate this issue.
Watch the video below of one of our first ever video blogs. Sorry it’s pretty rough, we used a cell phone camera and windows moviemaker 
By Matthew Noon Google+
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If you find a tick attached to your skin, there’s no need to panic. There are several tick removal devices on the market, but a plain set of fine-tipped tweezers will remove a tick quite effectively.
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You spend precious time and money making your lawn look perfect, but in a matter of days, lawn pests can undo all your hard work. Common lawn pests like chinch bugs and mole crickets can turn your lush green lawn into a disaster with yellow patches and dead grass. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you suspect something is eating away at your grass, try a home test to see if one of the many common lawn pests is infiltrating your yard. A bucket of soapy water poured over a patch of your lawn will irritate the skin of bugs and bring them to the surface. Once you determine the cause, try a treatment plan to get rid of the pests. Of course, if you have a bigger problem on your hands call in the professionals..
Remember to take precautions when using at home pesticides and chemicals. They are often not safe for pets and may irritate a child’s skin, and yours, if contact is made. Always use protective clothing when spraying chemicals. Keep pets and humans away from treated areas for at least 24 hours.
These simple tricks can help keep your lawn healthy and free of pests. Have a recurring problem? For a stress free way of eliminating bugs and keeping them away, call Noon Turf Care and have us routinely check and treat for problems.
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Noon Turf Care’s CFO and management team of 12 attended the Green Systems Annual Software conference where she was the keynote speaker. Stephanie Lee tells her inspiring life story where she overcame adversity and many challenges throughout her personal life and professional career to get to where she is today. She explains how she started at Noon Turf Care as an administrative assistant when Noon Turf was a small startup company with only 6 employees and worked her way up to CFO in 5 years where the company now employs over 50 professionals.
Lee was so successful early on at Noon Turf Care that owners Matt and Chris Noon offered to assist her in paying for her undergraduate degree to retain her employment at their company long-term. This past year Lee was named the CFO of the year by the Boston Business Journal.
Lee finished her speech by saying “The advice I can give younger professionals looking to work their way up in a company is as difficulties arise, just remember you’re stronger than you think you are. Never use the setbacks and losses in your life as a crutch.”
Noon Turf Care and its team spent 3 days at the conference attending software training classes, networking and learning new techniques they could apply to further improve their company. Everyone had a great time learning new software updates, team building and enjoying the fantastic Florida weather.
About Noon Turf Care: Noon Turf Care was started in 2001 by brothers Christopher Noon, Seton Hall graduate class of 2000, and Matthew Noon, Boston College graduate class of 2002. It started as a small internet based Lawn Care Company that provides Massachusetts residences and businesses with fertilization services for lawns, trees and shrubs. Noon Turf care is a privately owned company that prides themselves on providing exceptional and personal service in an industry dominated by large national chains. Noon Turf Care services over 6,000 customers and has a team of over 50 lawn and horticulture specialists working for the company.
By Matthew Noon Google+
With bed bugs bunking just about everywhere these days, people battling the bloodsucking insects may be tempted to try their hand at driving them away.
But ultrasonic bug zappers, which retail for less than $25, aren’t the solution, say entomologists who tested some of the devices.
“I can understand on a personal level how you would want to go to great lengths and get rid of them and protect yourself,” says Kasey Yturralde, a grad student in entomology at Northern Arizona University. She had a memorable trip back in 2006 when she ran into them while visiting a friend. “It was pretty traumatic,” she tells Shots.
Recently, Yturralde and her co-author Richard W. Hofstetter tried out four different ultrasonic devices available on Amazon: one designed specifically for bed bugs and three that claimed to repel insects and small furry mammalian pests.
Their simple experimental design consisted of two 5-gallon buckets lined with sound-muffling insulation that were connected by a tube. An ultrasonic device was placed in one bucket, and eight to 10 bed bugs were placed in the tube.
More care was given to how the bed bugs were housed in the lab. The researchers kept them in large jars, like those used for canning, which were placed in bins full of soapy water. And every lip or edge over which an rogue bedbug would have to crawl was covered in a slippery substance a little like liquid Teflon, Yturralde says, to keep them from escaping.
In test after test, the bed bugs showed no preference for either bucket. “They were equally distributed across the two arenas,” Yturralde notes. None of the four devices drove the bed bugs away.
It wasn’t entirely illogical to think that ultrasonic frequencies might work against bed bugs. After all, the bark beetles Yturralde and Hofstetter normally study communicate in the ultrasonic range of sound. The devices could interfere with bug communication. But, of course, not all bugs act the same.
“There have been tests of these devices with other insects, and they haven’t shown any effect,” Yturralde says. Now people can know that they won’t be effective on bed bugs either, she says, “and move onto other means of extermination.”
The results appear in the Journal of Economic Entomology.
by SARAH ZIELINSKI
December 10, 2012 9:50 AM
Reposted By Matthew Noon Google+
Bed bugs have been reported in Massachusetts in towns like Framingham, MA and Worcester, MA.
In recent years, a disease spread by ticks has become more common across the country.
Lyme disease causes a skin rash, and in some cases, more serious symptoms. The rash usually goes away with antibiotics, but some people say they have other symptoms that persist for months or years.
Now a study published in the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine suggests those with a recurring rash don’t have one long illness. Instead, they’re getting new infections from fresh tick bites.
Researchers recently conducted an experiment in which they examined Lyme disease-causing bacteria in the blood of 17 patients suffering from a recurrence of the rash. Then they compared these bacteria to a sample taken from the same patients during an earlier flare-up of Lyme symptoms.
If Lyme disease actually were a chronic condition, you’d expect the two bacteria samples to be identical. But they weren’t.
“These were different bacteria,” says Dr. Robert Nadelman, an infectious disease specialist at New York Medical College. “One can infer from that that these are different infections, and therefore caused by different tick bites, as opposed to people who possibly could have had relapses of infections that weren’t adequately treated.”
For many people, Nadelman says, it’s easy to get newly infected with Lyme disease — especially for those living in the Northeast.
“People still live in areas where there are deer ticks, or they work in areas where there are deer ticks, or they have recreation in areas where there are deer ticks,” he says. “And the tick bites themselves are … on body parts that you don’t see very well, such as the buttocks or behind the knee.”
When a deer tick carrying the Lyme disease bacteria bites, the resulting rash can look like this bull’s-eye.
Not every doctor agrees with the findings. Dr. Samuel Shor, a professor at George Washington University, says a study examining only 17 patients isn’t large enough to draw any conclusions.
Still, whether or not Lyme disease is a chronic condition, in rare cases, it is a very serious condition.
Dr. Allen Steere, a rheumatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who’s studied Lyme disease for decades, says that without treatment, Lyme disease can lead to abnormalities in the heart and brain within weeks of an infection.
He says patients at risk of contracting Lyme disease will notice a bug bite surrounded by a red rash that expands slowly and eventually grows to the size of a plate or even larger. Steere says if patients see this and also feel stiff, achy or feverish, they should see a doctor immediately.
To see the full article by PATTI NEIGHMOND on November 14, 2012, continue to NPR here
Cases of Lyme Disease have been reported in Berkshire County, Bristol and Plymouth Counties, Cape Cod Counties, Essex County, Franklin County, Hampden County, Hampshire County, Norfolk County, Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, and Worcester County.
These counties include towns like Framingham, Worcester, Natick, Waltham, Boston, Lowell, Sudbury, Stow, Hudson, Marlborough, Westboro, Southboro, Newton, Westford, Andover, Methuen, Haverhill, Norwood, Shrewsbury and more.
By Matthew Noon Google+
Tags: Boston, framingham, garden, gardening, green, healthy lawn, Hudson, insect, landscape, landscaping, lawn, lawn care, marlborough, massachusetts, natick, nature, noon turf care, pest, pest control, services, shrub, shrub care, sudbury, tree, tree care, worcester
