April showers bring May flowers which usher in June “bugs”!

I confess, I have attached a slightly different ending to the old adage above and suggested insects tend to appear in June, but for some of our biggest turf adversaries this is indeed true!  So who are the big players that are starting to make their grand entrance?  Let’s start with two coastal Carolina favorites, the tawny and southern mole crickets.  These strange creatures look more like a byproduct of the Fukushima reactor; a crayfish-like giant cricket which causes extensive damage to turf through their tunneling and feeding activities.  Coastal North Carolina is the northern range for these two non-native species accidentally introduced from South America.  Their distribution includes all southeastern coastal states from North Carolina up to and including east Texas. The appearance of these crickets in late spring is attributable to mating flights of adult crickets. During these flights females fly to male crickets that beckon from deep…