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Insect Control

Licensed insect control for lawns and ornamental plantings across Maryland's Eastern Shore, Delaware, and Virginia. Bagworm removal, Japanese beetle treatment, sod webworm, chinch bug, grub control, and ornamental pest management. Marshall Property Management — Cambridge, MD.

Get a Free Estimate (443) 205-4415

Identification first. Treatment when the timing is right.

A lot of insect damage in lawns and ornamental plantings gets misdiagnosed. Brown patches in August might be drought stress, fungal pressure, grub feeding below the surface, or chinch bug activity working the turf from above. Treating the wrong thing wastes money and leaves the actual problem in place. Marshall’s approach starts with correctly identifying what’s present, understanding what stage the pest is in, and applying treatment at the point where it’s actually going to work.

We carry MDA Pesticide Business License #27327 and MDA Applicator License #42337. On properties enrolled in a year-round maintenance plan, we’re on site often enough to catch developing pest pressure before it reaches the point where major intervention is needed. The Shore’s climate doesn’t reset cleanly in winter — pest populations that build through a mild season carry into the next.

Subsurface Feeding

White Grubs

Larval stage of Japanese beetles, May/June beetles, and masked chafers. Feed on grass roots from late summer through fall, then again in spring before pupating. Damage appears as irregular brown patches that lift like loose carpet. Preventive treatment in early summer is considerably more effective than curative treatment after feeding begins.
Surface Feeding

Sod Webworm

Larvae cut grass blades at the thatch line and drag clippings into silk-lined tunnels. Damage starts as small irregular brown patches and expands quickly in hot, dry conditions. The Shore’s summer heat accelerates development — two to three generations per season.
Thatch Zone

Chinch Bug

Feeds by piercing grass stems and injecting a toxin that prevents water movement. The result looks almost identical to drought stress — why they’re consistently misdiagnosed. Worst in hot, dry July and August. Check: part the grass at the edge of a suspicious brown area and look for movement at the thatch level.
Late Summer Peak

Billbug

Adult billbugs feed on grass stems in spring; larvae feed on roots and crowns through summer. Damage is often written off as drought until turf fails to recover in fall, by which point the root system has been substantially destroyed.
Warm Season Turf

Bermudagrass Mite

Microscopic eriophyid mite that infests bermudagrass and zoysia, causing tufted, stunted growth. Populations explode in hot, dry conditions. Properties with warm-season turf along the waterfront see this more often than inland sites.
Annual Pressure

Annual Bluegrass Weevil

Larvae feed inside grass stems and then on roots, causing yellow and brown streaking. Spring timing for preventive treatment is narrow — monitoring and identification are essential to catching pressure before the damage window opens.

Bagworms on the Eastern Shore: why they’re worse here and what actually works.

Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis is one of the most destructive landscape pests on the Eastern Shore. The bags look like pine cone debris attached to branches. By the time they’re obvious, feeding has been underway for weeks.

The Shore’s warm summers, mild winters, and abundance of arborvitae, eastern red cedar, and juniper give bagworms ideal conditions. A single mature female produces 500 to 1,000 eggs. On a row of arborvitae, an undetected infestation can kill the entire planting within two seasons — and arborvitae and juniper cannot regenerate from bare wood.

Timing is everything. The treatment window falls between late May and mid-June on the Shore. Applications outside that window produce poor results. Infestations on second homes that have gone unmonitored for several seasons often require both treatment and removal of dead plant material.

April: Monitoring

Overwintered egg masses begin hatching. Inspection of arborvitae, cedar, and juniper starts now. Scouting for small larvae on new growth establishes treatment timing.

Late May: Treatment

Larvae are small, actively feeding, and most vulnerable. The most effective application timing. Bt, spinosad, and conventional insecticides depending on scope and property context.

June: Window Narrows

Bags grow larger and larvae become harder to reach. Treatment is still possible in early June; late June through July against large bags has poor results.

Fall: Assessment

Mature bags physically removed from deciduous plantings to reduce next year’s egg mass. Evergreen damage evaluated for recovery potential. Replacement planning for plants that will not regenerate.
Ornamental Pest

Scale Insects

Armored and soft scales infest holly, euonymus, taxus, and a wide range of ornamental shrubs. Feed on plant sap under a protective covering. Crawlers — the mobile juvenile stage — are the treatment window.
Ornamental Pest

Lace Bugs

Azalea, andromeda, and hawthorn lace bugs are chronic Shore problems. Feed on leaf undersides, leaving bleached stippling often attributed to fertilizer burn. Multiple generations per season.
Ornamental Pest

Mites

Two-spotted spider mites and eriophyid mites thrive in hot, dry Shore summers. Arborvitae, roses, maples, and many ornamentals are susceptible. Fine webbing and bronze-gray foliage discoloration are the first signs.
Ornamental Pest

Aphids

Multiple species target roses, crape myrtles, viburnums, and ornamental cherries. Heavy populations produce honeydew that leads to sooty mold. Populations can explode within a week under favorable conditions.
Ornamental Pest

Emerald Ash Borer

EAB is present throughout Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia and is fatal to untreated ash trees. Treatment is effective when started before roughly 50% canopy dieback. Properties with ash should have a current assessment and treatment plan in place.
Ornamental Pest

Bronze Birch Borer

Serious borer pest of river birch and white birch — both common in Shore landscaping. Attacks stressed trees preferentially. The D-shaped exit holes are the most reliable confirmation. Works top-down through the crown.

Japanese beetles: two damage problems in one insect.

Japanese beetles cause significant damage in two distinct phases targeting completely different parts of your property at different times of year.

Adults emerge in late June and feed voraciously on ornamental foliage, flowers, and fruit from July through August. Rose, crape myrtle, linden, and Japanese maple are particularly attractive. Once feeding begins, pheromones attract additional beetles. Beetle traps draw more beetles into an area than they capture — they’re counterproductive for most residential situations.

What feeds on your ornamentals in July lays eggs in your lawn in August. The larvae — white grubs — spend fall and winter feeding on turf roots. Lawn care and ornamental pest management are connected by this lifecycle, which is why a coordinated approach through the whole season produces better results than treating each problem separately.

Late June–July — Adults emerge, feed, mate, and begin egg laying simultaneously.

July–August — Females return to turf to lay eggs 2–4 inches deep. Moist, well-irrigated lawns are preferred egg-laying sites.

August–October — Larvae hatch and move to the root zone. Turf root damage accumulates. Preventive treatment applied in early summer targets young larvae at peak vulnerability.

November–March — Grubs overwinter deeper, return to the root zone in spring for secondary feeding before pupating. Spring curative treatments exist but are significantly less effective than preventive summer applications.

Insect damage caught in April doesn’t become a $6,000 replanting problem in October.

Early identification and properly timed treatment costs a fraction of what it takes to replace mature plantings or renovate a lawn that’s been worked over by a season of undetected grub or sod webworm feeding. The properties where this works out well are the ones being looked at regularly.

Our year-round maintenance plans include regular landscape assessment that builds insect monitoring into the standard service cadence. Issues get flagged when they’re early-stage, treatment windows don’t get missed, and the landscape holds its condition season over season.

See also: Lawn Care · Weed Control · Estate Maintenance · HOA Services

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Get a Free Estimate (443) 205-4415