Turns out, they were having a problem with Jiggers and I had happily walked across a lawn infested with them.  Thankfully, I didn’t have an outbreak but I heard all about the horrors of these little pests, a first for me, and it scared me enough to keep me off the lawn for the entire trip.

If you aren’t sure what a jiggers are, you might be familiar with the other names for them.  They have been called Chiggers, Red Bugs and Harvest Mites.  What they are, is the immature harvest mite that are about pin sized and they live off blood.  That’s what makes them so annoying, not that they are in the lawn, since they can’t do much to your lawn but the fact that they will climb onto people, or animals, and bite.

The bites cause severe itching and it can last for days.  Usually it is in the crevices of the body, such as armpits, elbow joints, etc.  From what I have been led to believe, the bite of a Jigger is much worse than any other creepy crawly that can live on a person’s body.

So how do you get rid of Jiggers so that your beautifully landscaped lawn can be enjoyed both on and off of it?  Well, it isn’t as simple as one, two, three but there are a few things you can do to get rid of them.

1. Keep you lawn cut and free of weeds.  Jiggers love dense foliage and if there is a lot of it, your sure to see some jiggers there.
2. Remove any dense foliage that is not needed in your landscaping.  Don’t strip the area but if its not needed, try to avoid it.
3. Get rid of any dying or decaying plants or leaves.  Jiggers enjoy these piles as an ideal habitat so try to remove them when you can.
4. Flood the lawn or affected area with a solution of soap and water.  This will kill all the adults as well as the larvae.  This should be repeated on a weekly basis for about a month.
5. Spray your ankles with insect repellent before going into the yard.

Remember, Jiggers are a spring to fall pest and early treatment should see you using your yard without any worries for the majority of the season.

Sirena Van Schaik

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Keeping destructive insects to a minimum is now easier than ever. Thanks to innovative biologists and chemists, there are a dozen safe ways to control damaging insects.

The first step is to correctly identify what kind of insects you have or are likely to get. There are thousands of common species, but typically only a handful do most of the harm in any given area. These can often be identified in one or more of three ways..

You can check the leaves of your plants, flowers and shrubs and match them against photos you can find online. If you search for information about the specific plants you’re worried about you’ll quickly find the most common pests. Accompanying that information is frequently a photo you can use for comparison..

Many times, though, insects on flowers, trees, grass and other plants are hidden. In that case you can rely on a guess and apply control methods based on the common invasive species. Aphids frequently infest rose bushes, for example, and can be difficult to spot. Grass often has grub infestations that could only be visually detected by careful inspection underneath the soil..

Another method is to examine the effects..

If you find large, roughly round, brown spots on grass – especially in late Spring through Summer – you probably have a Japanese Beetle grub problem. There can be other causes, double check your guess by the previously listed methods. If you find that patches of grass pull away easily from the soil like carpet that has come loose from its tacks, you probably have a grub problem..

Once you identify the species that is causing the problem, eliminating it is usually safe, inexpensive and easy using modern control methods. That doesn’t necessarily mean purchasing and spraying large areas with chemicals, though many today are designed to be perfectly safe for humans and the environment..

Instead of using grub killing fertilizer or insecticide, for example, you can use biological control methods. These are becoming more popular and more effective all the time. A substance called ‘milky spores’ can be a very cost effective way to control grubs in lawns..

Initially biological control may be more costly than a bag of grub insecticide. A 30lb bag of grub killer may cost $10 and last two years where a 1-liter bottle of milky spores may be $30 or more, but it lasts for 10 years. The substance works well because it actually contains living organisms that invade the grub larvae and interrupts their growth cycle. In effect, you have one organism killing another. But the spores do no harm to your lawn, only to the grub..

There are many other biological control methods, each tailored to attack a specific problem. They have to be, since organisms are fairly particular about what insects they will invade and when. But you’ll find them safe, cost effective and frequently longer lasting than chemical methods..

You can always fall back onto chemical insecticides when needed, too. Modern insecticides have become very sophisticated, frequently decaying from the environment safely and quickly into harmless byproducts. At the same time, they do the job before fading away.

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