Mole Crickets: Treat in June, Not When You See Them

First: which animal?

Two completely unrelated creatures share half a name, and the confusion costs people money before they read a word of advice.

Grub control does not remove moles, and mole traps do not touch mole crickets. If the mounds are conical heaps of loose soil and something is eating your earthworms, you want best mole killer and the honest answer it gives about what actually works. If the surface has soft snaking ridges and the turf is thinning from below with no root mass left, stay here.

The soap flush

Before buying anything, get a count. This is the mole cricket equivalent of the tug test on grubs and the float test on chinch bugs, and UF/IFAS gives the recipe exactly:

“Mix ¾ oz. (1.5 tablespoons) of liquid dishwashing soap in a container with 1 gallon of water”

then “pour the soap solution over the marked area” — a 2 × 2 ft plot — and

“Observe the area for 3 minutes; count and collect the mole crickets that emerge.”

Clemson publishes a slightly stronger mix for the same test — “mix 1 to 2 fluid ounces of liquid dish soap in a gallon of water, and then pour this mixture onto a 2 square foot area” — and adds the reassurance that makes the test worth doing at all: “they will come to the soil surface rather quickly if present.” Either recipe works; the plot size is what has to stay fixed, because the number only means something per unit area.

The soap is an irritant, not a killer. It drives whatever is down there to the surface, which is why three minutes of watching beats an afternoon of guessing. Do it in a few different spots, because mole cricket damage is patchy and the middle of the lawn is often clean while a sunny edge is full.

What you are looking for when they come up: a hard brown armoured body about an inch long with a pair of front legs shaped like shovels. Nothing else in a lawn looks like that.

What our research records for Alabama

Our state file lists the local pest pressure as Fire ants, Mole crickets, Fall armyworms, Chinch bugs. The mole cricket entry reads “Mole crickets (Gulf Coast turf's own pest)” — worth reading closely, because the qualifier in it is often geographic rather than statewide.

Turf climate here is warm-season and the dominant lawn grass is Centipede, with Bermuda, St. Augustine, Zoysia also grown — check that against UF's susceptibility list further down before deciding how worried to be.

Why June, and not when you see them

Here is the whole page in one comparison. NC State, on imidacloprid:

“Apply while crickets are less than ½ inch long (June, early July)”

UF/IFAS, on why:

“Small mole cricket nymphs feeding and growing during the summer months are more susceptible to insecticides than large nymphs present in late summer and fall.”

Now set that against when a homeowner actually notices mole crickets. Adults tunnel and fly in spring, which is visible and alarming and too early — those adults are about to lay eggs that have not hatched yet, so an application then hits the generation that is leaving rather than the one that will do the damage. Then the damage itself peaks in late summer and autumn, when the nymphs are large, harder to kill, and have already eaten the roots.

So both moments that prompt someone to buy a product are the wrong moments. The month that works is the quiet one in between.

The life cycle explains why there is no second chance. UF/IFAS: eggs develop over “10–40 days, depending on the soil temperature”, and nymphs require “23–38 weeks during which they go through 8–10 instars before becoming adults.” One generation a year. Miss June and the next opportunity is next June.

NC State also notes a two-shot approach for a different chemistry — for indoxacarb, treatments follow egg hatch and “Two applications 2-4 weeks apart works best.”

Fitting June into Alabama's calendar

Local fertilization window: Bermuda and zoysia: May through August. Centipede: one light feeding, and that is the whole programme That matters here because the cheapest mole cricket products are fertiliser-and-insecticide combinations, and they only make sense if June is a month your grass should be fed anyway.

Frost dates bracket the generation: Early April (north) to late February (Mobile Bay) to Early November (north Alabama) to early December (Gulf Coast). Soil temperature is what drives the 10-to-40-day egg stage, so a cool spring here pushes hatch later and a warm one pulls it earlier — the calendar month is a proxy, not the mechanism.

And these are Alabama's own summer tasks from our research, which is the programme a June insecticide has to fit inside:

• Feed bermuda and zoysia monthly; give centipede iron for colour instead of more nitrogen
• Mow centipede at 1.5–2 inches, St. Augustine at 3–4 — the same deck setting cannot serve both
• Scout for mole cricket tunnelling on coastal lawns after evening rain

What the damage actually looks like

UF/IFAS on the mechanism:

“Feeding on the underground plant parts can cause an overall decline, dead patches, and little to no root mass.”

and on the surface sign:

“raised surface ridges that disrupt ball roll on golf courses”

On a home lawn those ridges are the diagnostic. Soft, winding, roughly a finger’s width, pushing the turf up rather than cutting through it, with loose granular soil pushed out where a burrow surfaces. Walk it barefoot and the ground gives.

And the phrase to hold onto is “little to no root mass.” That puts mole crickets in the same family of problems as grubs — turf that lifts because there is nothing holding it — and it is why the tug test is worth doing alongside the soap flush. What separates them is the ridge: grubs sever roots and leave the surface intact, mole crickets sculpt it.

Our free Lawn Health Analyzer runs the same differential as a questionnaire if you would rather answer symptom questions than dig.

The grasses they choose

UF/IFAS:

“Bahiagrass, bermudagrass, and seashore paspalum tend to be the most susceptible to damage caused by mole crickets.”

And NC State adds a distinction that matters at the point of purchase:

“The coarser textured bermudagrass cultivars are less susceptible to mole crickets than the finer textured hybrids.”

Read that twice if you are choosing a bermuda. The fine hybrid you pay a premium for is the more attractive target; common coarse bermuda takes less damage. That is an unusual case of the cheaper option being the more robust one, and it belongs in the decision alongside everything in bermuda grass care.

Bahiagrass heads UF’s list, which is worth knowing because that grass is otherwise close to pest-free — UF calls the mole cricket its most serious insect threat. If you chose bahiagrass for its lack of problems, this is the one problem.

Treating it, and reading the bag properly

Clemson adds the step that decides whether any of it reaches the insect, and it happens the day before you open the bag: “water the lawn well the day before the application of baits and granular or liquid insecticides.” Mole crickets go deeper in dry soil, so a dry lawn treated on schedule is a lawn where the nymphs were below the chemistry.

With one exception that reverses the usual instruction. Granules get watered in; baits do not. Clemson is explicit that you do not water in baits after application — wait two or three days instead. A bait watered in on the habit of watering in granules is a bait you have washed off the surface the insect forages on.

Their treatment window matches the one above and extends it on the coast: June and July “because turfgrass damage is minor, and the mole crickets are still immature and small”, with additional nymph treatments along the South Carolina coast “usually made in mid-July to early August.”

Two label lines that decide whether the application works. NC State records both.

The first is a setback: on lambda-cyhalothrin products, “Do not make applications within 20 feet of any body of water.” On a lot with a pond, a ditch or a canal — which describes much of the range this insect occupies — that removes exactly the damp margin where the crickets often are.

The second is counterintuitive enough to catch experienced people. Some formulations specify “Do NOT water in after application” — the opposite of the instruction on most granular insecticides, including the grub products sitting next to them on the shelf. Read that line before you touch the hose, because watering in the wrong product moves the active off the zone where the nymphs are feeding.

How to read a pesticide label covers finding both of those in the small print.

On the fertiliser-combination products, which are the cheapest route to a mole cricket active: they only make sense where June is a month your grass should be fed anyway. On a bermuda lawn that is true. On bahiagrass — the grass at the top of UF’s susceptibility list — it is not, because that species wants one to two pounds of nitrogen a year. The most affected grass is the one that least wants the convenient product.

Before you apply anything in Alabama

Local restrictions on the books: No statewide lawn fertilizer blackout; Alabama Extension issues phosphorus recommendations from the soil test Centipede and St. Augustine are named as restricted or prohibited on a long list of common herbicide labels — in Alabama that label check matters more than the weed identification

The agency that enforces it is Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries, Pesticide Management.

And the 20-foot water setback above is worth checking against local ground: drainage here reads Coastal sand drains almost too fast and leaches nutrients away; Black Belt chalk clay holds water and turns to grease after a storm

The wasp works all season

The insecticide window is one month a year. The biological controls are not seasonal in the same way, which is why they are worth knowing about rather than dismissing as academic. UF/IFAS lists three, all established in Florida rather than experimental:

• The nematode, Steinernema scapterisci.
• The wasp, Larra bicolor — and this one has a condition attached that is a planting decision rather than a purchase. UF notes it requires nectar sources, naming larraflower. A wasp with nothing to feed on does not stay.
• The fly, Ormia depleta, the Brazilian red-eyed fly.

The practical reading: if you are in the core of this insect’s range and treating every June, the nectar planting is the one intervention that keeps working in the eleven months your insecticide does not. It is also the only item on this page that gets better over time rather than needing repeating.

The honest summary

The mole cricket is an unusually well-behaved pest to manage, on one condition: that you treat by the calendar rather than by the damage.

Confirm it first — ¾ oz of dish soap in a gallon of water over two feet square, watched for three minutes, and be sure you are not looking at a mole, which is a mammal none of this applies to. Then treat in June or early July, while the nymphs are under half an inch, because UF is clear that the large nymphs of late summer are the hard ones. Then read two lines on the bag: the 20-foot water setback, and whether the product wants watering in or explicitly does not.

And if you are choosing grass rather than fixing a lawn: bahiagrass, bermuda and seashore paspalum are the susceptible three, and among bermudas the fine hybrids more than the coarse ones. Support a Larra wasp with something for it to drink and the June application gets easier every year.