Hey, guys. I’m John with Erbert Lawns. Thanks for watching the show today. I want to talk about mite damage this winter. Let me show you what’s going on here. It’s mid-January in Colorado, and as you can see, we have a lot of snow on the ground, and it’s covering most of the grass. As we get over here, you could see where the sun has melted the snow off the grass in this part of the lawn. This is the south-west facing side of the lawn. These are the type of areas where the mites like to get in and start to dig and do their biting and cause trouble with the lawn. The reason why they do that is because these areas tend to dry out faster than areas that are covered in snow. The mites do not like the water, the moisture, or the snow. They like it where it’s hot and dry. This would be an example of a perfect place where mite damage could occur in the lawn.
There are some things you can do to avoid this throughout the winter. First of all, when we have a lot of dry days, which, in Colorado, we do get quite a few dry days, it’s a good idea to go ahead and pull your hose out or run a sprinkler certain times of the winter if it is going to be dry. That’s one thing you could do to keep that ground moist and wet and keep those mites from doing damage to your lawn. As you can see, I’m just showing in this picture here that the lawn is dry and there’s no snow over here. This particular part of the lawn does not have any mite damage. You can see it’s actually looking pretty good, but, again, this is just an example where it dries out really fast.
The second thing you can do is have a company spray your lawn. That’s what we do mostly for our customers. We have a winter mite control treatment, and we are proactive on that. We treat the lawn in these particular areas during the winter time just to keep the mites out there. It’s a preventative maintenance. Now, generally, when you’re spraying for pesticides, you want to find a pest first and then treat them. You don’t want to over-pesticide your lawn or put more product down than you need to, but the problem is, what we found out is once customers find out they have mites in their lawn, it’s too late. They’ve done their damage. It’s generally April or May when we discover the damage, and there’s no need to spray them because they’ve done their damage to the lawn, and it’s gone, and it’s done. This is why we take a preventative approach to mite control. We have a beagle next door that’s making all kinds of noise.
As you can see here, this is the front part of the lawn. You can see much more snow is on this side of the lawn. Obviously, some of the snow is here because we piled it up from the driveway, but as I get over here to the lawn, you can see there’s a lot of snow on this lawn, and so you’re never probably going to have mite damage on this section of the lawn because it’s just not going to get hot enough or dry out. But again, let’s go walk down the street, and I’ll give you some other examples and some areas of the lawns that are very prone to mite damage.
As I’m walking down the street here, on the left side of the street, which is probably going to be more of the south-facing side, you can see there’s a lot less snow on this side of the street versus this side of the street. Again, when we have these areas of the lawn that heat up really bad, you’re going to have a potential situation for mites to come in and start tearing up your lawn. These are the areas of your lawn you want to water in the winter time or you want to have your lawn care company pay attention to these sections of the yard during the winter time. Sometimes, if we do have a wet winter and we get a lot of snow and a lot of cold temperatures, you actually won’t have much mite problems at all, but it’s when it’s we get a dry winter and we don’t get a lot of snow, the mites come out and just make a mess of those sections of the yard.
Also, if you have any hills or anything on a hill, the water tends to run off a hill faster than a flat area. Hills on a south or west facing side or a south-west facing side actually are prone to mite damage because the hill just makes the conditions even better for the mites because no water is being held into the ground. It kind of rolls off, so the ground gets really dry quickly and fast.
Again, you can see here as we walk down the street, the lawns are almost completely, I wouldn’t say dry, but the snow has completely melted on this side, and then you go to this side of the street, and you can see there’s just snow everywhere there. It’s safe to say that this side of the street, which is going to be more of your north side facing, it’s not completely north, but it’s mostly north, you’re going to have a lot of snow over there. You’re probably never going to have too much trouble with mites. Then you can look on this side of the street where the lawns are mostly melted from the snow, you’re going to have a potential for mite damage on this side of the street.
If you want to know where to water your yard or you want to know where to direct your lawn care company to treat in the winter time, just pay attention in the winter months to see where the snow melts first and where it melts the fastest, and that’s the area of your yard/lawn that’s going to be susceptible to mite damage.
All right, guys. That’s all I got for you this week. Thanks for checking us out. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below, and if you have anything you want to talk about in the future, just let me know also. I’ll do my best to address those questions and issues. This is John with Erbert Lawns in Denver, Colorado. Have a great day.
