If patches of your lawn suddenly look ragged or chewed, with grass blades notched or skeletonized almost overnight, sod webworms or fall armyworms are the most likely culprits in our area during summer and early fall. Both are caterpillar pests that can strip a healthy lawn down to bare dirt in a matter of days if they go unnoticed.
How to tell if you have them
Both pests feed at night, so damage often seems to appear out of nowhere. A simple check: mix a couple tablespoons of dish soap into a gallon of water and pour it over a suspicious patch. If caterpillars are present, they’ll surface within a few minutes. Birds pecking at the lawn more than usual is another early warning sign — they’re often the first ones to notice an infestation.
Why they show up here specifically
Our warm, humid climate and long growing season give these pests more generations per year than they’d get further north, and fall armyworm outbreaks in particular tend to move through the Southeast in waves during late summer.
Why waiting is expensive
Because damage can go from “a few thin spots” to “bare dirt” within a week, this is one of the few lawn issues where speed genuinely matters. A quarterly program with monitoring catches these early; homeowners who wait until damage is obvious are often looking at reseeding or resodding a chewed-up section instead of a simple treatment.
The takeaway
If you notice sudden, ragged damage in summer or fall, don’t wait to see if it gets better — it almost never does on its own. Fast identification and a targeted treatment is the difference between a minor scare and a bare patch that takes months to fill back in.
