Three annoyances: Sod webworms, weed fabric, Indian hawthorn

QUESTION: I was walking through my yard, and my grass has been looking really good, but I started kicking up thousands of these little grayish-white moths or butterflies, and now I'm worried. What are they?

ANSWER: Oh my goodness, they're back. Those bad, bad tropical sod webworms, or perhaps it's one of their hungrier, more temperate cousins.

These things run in cycles that are hard to predict, but up until a few years ago, no one ever talked about sod webworms on this part of the Gulf Coast.

Now, for the past several years, they've been turning up every fall.

It's not those grayish moths with their distinctive long snouts that do the actual damage. It's their rambunctious young'uns, the caterpillars, which will eat grass blades to the ground. They don't eat roots, so the grass will usually recover, but not before it's weakened and the bare spots begin to attract weeds.

If you wait until the grass is visibly damaged, you've waited too late. The damage has been done and you'll just have to wait for it to recover.

But if you resolve to treat when you see the moths flitting about, laying eggs, you can treat these guys easily and safely. Simply get a small bottle of Dipel or Thuricide, which contains a disease that is harmful only to caterpillars.

Do it immediately, because once the caterpillars are large enough to see easily, it will be too late to kill them. They'll be too tough to die, and they'll have already had the fill of your plants.

Instead look for the moths, and start treating every 7 to 10 days as long as you see the moths.

QUESTION: I've been developing a community vegetable garden, and someone thinks we should use garden cloth to control weeds. He said we could just compost on top of that. What do you think?

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Three annoyances: Sod webworms, weed fabric, Indian hawthorn