Best grub control, starting with whether you need any

Grub control is the lawn product most often bought on a hunch, and a hunch is a bad basis because the symptom — a brown patch that lifts like carpet — has at least four other common causes. So this page starts with a count rather than a product, and for a good many readers it ends there too.

The short answer

The count, and the four things grubs get blamed for

Grub damage looks like irregular brown patches in late summer whose turf lifts freely because the roots have been eaten. That is a specific description and it is also what drought stress, dog urine, fungal disease and a thick thatch layer all look like from a standing position.

1. Pick the edge of a damaged patch, not the middle. The middle is already dead and the grubs have moved on. The margin is where they are feeding now.
2. Cut three sides of a one-foot square with a spade and roll it back. Go down about two to three inches — grubs feed in the root zone, not deep soil.
3. Count the white C-shaped larvae. Published extension thresholds for a healthy, well-rooted lawn generally fall around five to ten per square foot. A vigorous lawn tolerates more than a thin one.
4. Roll the turf back and water it. It will knit back down within a week or two if you keep it damp.
5. Repeat in two or three places. One sample is an anecdote. Grub populations are patchy by nature.

If your count comes in low, the money is better spent on the things that make a lawn tolerate grubs instead: cutting higher, watering deeply and less often, and feeding to build root mass. A deep-rooted lawn survives a population that would flatten a shallow one.

The two, on published figures

Two products, same shelf, same job, and the second one has four cells where the first has a published figure. That asymmetry is the ranking.

The coverage figure that disagrees with itself

This is worth its own section because it changes what you buy, not just what you read.

For comparison, Scotts' two bag sizes return exactly 2.87 lb per 1,000 sq ft each. Internal consistency across bag sizes is a small thing that tells you a lot, and it is the reason GrubEx1 leads this page.

1. Scotts GrubEx1 — the documented one

Scotts publishes chlorantraniliprole as the active ingredient, one 14.35 lb bag covering 5,000 sq ft and one 28.7 lb bag covering 10,000, application once a year in spring or early summer to prevent grub damage, up to four months of control from a single application, a grub list running to Japanese beetle, Asiatic garden beetle, black turfgrass ataenius, Aphodius spp., European chafer, green June beetle, May/June beetle and northern masked chafer larvae, plus armyworms, cutworms, sod webworms, billbug grubs and crane fly larvae, suppression of chinch bugs, a 20-minute soak to water it in, re-entry for family and pets once watered in and dry, and the ScottsMiracle-Gro No-Quibble Guarantee.

Who it is for: anyone whose count came in over the threshold and who is treating in spring or early summer. Three of those published items are unusual enough to name again: twelve pest species rather than a category, a watering instruction with an actual duration, and a re-entry condition in plain language. On a product you spread across ground children and dogs use, the last one is the whole purchase.

Who should skip it: anyone past early summer, because that is the window Scotts publishes; and anyone who needs a grass-type compatibility list, which Scotts does not provide.

#ad Check the Scotts GrubEx1 Season Long Grub Killer price on Amazon — how we're funded.

2. BioAdvanced Season Long Grub Control — the later window

BioAdvanced publishes a 12 lb bag treating up to 5,000 sq ft and a 24 lb bag up to 10,000, application anytime from spring through late summer, a season-long protective zone that kills grubs before they do damage, control of mole crickets and European crane fly larvae, and a separate claim that it increases turf root mass for thicker, stronger turf. It does not publish an active-ingredient percentage, a watering-in instruction, a re-entry statement or a guarantee on the page we cite.

Who it is for: the reader who got to this in August. That is a real situation and this is the real answer to it — a later window than Scotts publishes is genuinely useful and nothing else in the category offers it. The root-mass claim is published separately from the pest claim rather than folded into it, which is the honest way to make two different claims.

Who should skip it: anyone who wants a re-entry statement before treating a lawn that children or pets use. BioAdvanced does not publish one and Scotts does, and that single absence is the clearest reason to pick the other bag. Skip it too if the coverage ambiguity bothers you — it should, and buying on the maker's 5,000 sq ft figure is the way to be safe.

#ad Check the BioAdvanced Season Long Grub Control Plus Turf Revitalizer, 12 lb price on Amazon — how we're funded.

Getting it on the lawn evenly

Every rate on this page assumes even distribution, and a granular insecticide applied by hand produces bands of overdose next to bands of nothing. Both of these go down through a broadcast spreader.

• Use a spreader, and know your spread width. Our EdgeGuard DLX review covers the calibration question, and spreader settings covers what to do when a bag gives a rate per 1,000 sq ft and no dial number.
• Keep it off hard surfaces. Granules on a driveway wash into a storm drain rather than into your soil. This is what the EdgeGuard shutter is for, and it is also simply the right thing to do with a registered insecticide.
• Water in, if your bag says to. Scotts specifies a 20-minute soak; the product does nothing sitting on top of the turf. BioAdvanced publishes no instruction, which means reading the bag label rather than assuming either way.
• Do not combine it with other applications on a hunch. Neither maker publishes a tank-mix or co-application statement, and neither of these is a fertilizer even where it claims a turf benefit. The season plan is in the lawn care schedule.

Who should not buy either of these

• Anyone who has not counted. Stated again because it is the whole point of the page. Brown patches have four other common causes and only one of them is sold a cure in a bag.
• Anyone whose count came in low. A healthy, deep-rooted lawn tolerates a grub population that would wreck a thin one, and the money that builds those roots is better spent on fertilizer, aeration or a higher cut.
• Anyone looking at active late-season damage. Both of these are preventive. The job in front of you is turf repair — how to overseed and fertilizer for new grass — and the preventive application belongs in next year's calendar.
• Anyone treating a whole lawn for a patch. Grub populations are patchy. Spot-treating the area that failed the count, plus a margin, costs a fraction of a whole-lawn application.
• Anyone overseeding this autumn. That is already a crowded calendar — see crabgrass preventers for the same conflict in the other direction.

What we cannot tell you

Whether either of these will work on your lawn. We have not applied either product and have measured no result. Neither maker publishes a treatment threshold, so the five-to-ten count in this page's short answer is general extension guidance rather than a figure either company stands behind or that we have tied to a specific trial — check your own state extension service, whose number will be local and better. Scotts publishes no active-ingredient percentage and BioAdvanced publishes no active ingredient at all on the page we cite, so for neither product can we tell you how much chemistry reaches the root zone. BioAdvanced publishes no watering-in instruction, no re-entry statement and no guarantee, and its own coverage figure is half what the Amazon listing claims. Neither maker publishes a pollinator statement or any guidance on application near flowering plants, which for a soil-applied insecticide is a real gap. Neither publishes a grass-type compatibility list. And nothing on either page tells you what proportion of a population a single application actually suppresses, which is the figure that would let you decide whether treating was worth it.