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Army worms in newly planted Bermuda grass

3K views 8 replies 7 participants last post by  vhaby 
#1 ·
I live in north Alabama.I just planted a small field of Vaughn's 3 weeks ago.I used cuttings from mature grass and disked them in.I have done this before with great success.I have had good rains since I planted it but it is very thin so far.Tonite I noticed something was eating up what was up and low and behold I found army worms about 3/4" long.I am going to put out Lambda-cyhalothrin tomorrow.Will the newly emerged plants that the army worm ate up come back?Please tell me yeah.
 
#6 ·
I use a roller, When I notice the worms its just easer to roll and kill them. By the time you find them and get the sprayer ready and the spray it to late. I just have a roller in about every field. I can just hook to the truck and roll.
Learn somethin new everyday I tell ya.....never heard of that, squish the little bastards to death huh?

This year I instituted a stringent spray regiment starting July 1, spray every 20 days with Dimillin.....if I see any infestation, mustang, lambda, seven, etc gets added, whatever is cost effective and available....
Like Colby said, make sure you have adequate N.....although it always seems that they like the fields with plenty of N and purposely bypass the unfertilized fields :( it'll come back, like watchin water boil tho.....
 
#7 ·
As for them passing up fields with no fertilizer not in this state. 3 years ago they got bad here, They went through 90acres of my buddy's hay and he had just bought the land. It had not had anything done to it in 8+ years, It took all of 2 days and it was a dirt lot. That's when we learned about the roller. They went through a few thousand acres of hay that year. And the roller works like a champ.
 
#8 ·
I like how easy worms are to kill. We hardly ever get them unless it's a wet warm fall we will get them in oats or hay around October. Most of the time we just kill them and not worry about a residue. Mustang Max is way to expensive and liquid seven is also expensive for what it does. That's why we have changed to spraying lambda as all of our insecticide.
A roller would work well in a seedling patch. Never thought about that lol.
Other times it may be just better off to hurry and cut it if you can't get it sprayed faster
 
#9 ·
Need very even ground for a roller to squash these critters. Likely won't work well in gopher infested and feral hog rooted ground. Army worms are one reason to always have the sprayer checked out and ready.

Another one to watch for in alfalfa is alfalfa webworms. After the second cutting, I noticed an abundance of moths. In preparation for the third cutting 22 days after the 2nd cutting, the alfalfa webworms appeared. The caterpillars fasten alfalfa leaves together with a fine silk web and feed inside the web at the top of the plant. These caterpillars have two rows of black spots down their back. Cutting the alfalfa eliminated the problem as they can't live on the cut plants.
 

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