After a full renovation and hours of backbreaking work spreading 8 yards of loam, I had achieved lawn nirvana. Last night I had a dream about a skunk, woke up to that signature skunk smell and lo and behold all my hard work ruined.
I tried to stand up the ripped up grass and put some soil around it (doubt that will stick) and put down some 24hr grub killer and castor. Going to put mothballs around the yard.
R.I.P my lawn September 2025-October 2025
by Restaurant42
34 Comments
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RIP, sorry for your loss 😢
We like to add Milky Spore, usually some in the Spring and some right now. Gets rid of the grubs, which disincentivizes the skunks and raccoons to mess with the yard.
Also has allowed me to never have a Japanese beetle problem in my garden! I put it in my pots and garden beds too.
Try and salvage what’s possible of the big chunks by placing them back in place, and packing with top dressing or whatever you have (compost/soil/sand) and throw in some seed too if you have some still handy, and give it a little watering.
Then definitely put down some grub/insect killer (I always use Sevin but lots of stuff out there works). I’ve found if you ward off any follow up attacks, the lawn usually will usually repair itself – good luck!!
F’ing marmots. Nothing changes.
I’d spend twenty minutes putting the soil down and grass up and then flattening it all.
There is still time to reseed, you are giving up easy, I got a fungus 2 weeks ago that decimated my renovated yard, u have since reseeded and began watering again. Nothing has germinated yet, but im still hopeful.
How do you get to those front steps?
Top choice insect granules
I wish my problem was grubs the skunks were digging up. At least that can be resolved. My issue is squirrels digging up everything.
They didn’t kill it, just gonna look ugly for a while. This is why I always do pesticide every year, it’s not just for the grubs and ants; once those are under control, the raccoons and armadillos and stuff won’t really bother in your yard.
When it comes to this stuff, your yard doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the neighbors. The little critters will go tear up their lawns first, if they have more grubs.
A skunk is messing my yard up right now. How do I keep them away?
Dealing with skunks right now too. They’re adorable but annoying
I know it looks bad, but I just went through this literally like two weeks ago,
Every night for like eight days, they came back and ripped up parts of my lawn
And I had just done the same thing fully renovated
This is what you do
Keep watering don’t let it dry out ,
Go over the yard with your hand and try to brush dirt back into the holes
You’re gonna have grass that’s still attached
Just stick it back in the ground, and it will reroute and grow
You just wanna flatten it with your hand so that you don’t have mounds of dirt
Next you’re gonna wanna go get some bio advanced 24 hour grub killer that has dylox
Spread it and water it in heavily ,
Don’t replant any seed cause they’re probably gonna keep coming back for a couple nights
What’s gonna happen is you’re gonna see all the grubs come to the surface cause they’re gonna start dying it’s usually pretty fast like within one day
The skunk will come back again and it’ll start eating the ones that are on the surface, but it won’t dig anymore
Over the next two nights you’re gonna see a few holes here and there and they’re basically trying to smell for more grubs but when they smell that they’re mostly all dead
They will go away
Another thing that I would do and it’s very cheap buy a bottle of castor oil , put the whole bottle in a 1 gallon pump sprayer with about 2 tablespoons of dish soap
And then fill it with water, then go around wherever they damaged the ground and spray it into the ground
It won’t damage your grass at all it kind of stinks though
But they get one taste of that and they just will stop because they do not like the smell. They do not like the taste.
It’ll make them shit all over the place
The the other thing that you can do is go buy a roll of chicken wire
Spread it out over the damaged areas it’ll still let the grass get sunlight and water, but it won’t let them dig underneath. Put some ground stakes in it so they can’t pull it up.
You do those three things , and within about a week all that territory where they dug up, it’ll all start repairing itself. It won’t look bad at all. You’ll have a few you know, bare spots here and there, but you can worry about that in the spring.
Just make sure that you use a grub preventative next year
Little skunk fucker ripped me off
I’m sorry man but I lol’ed
Happened to me last year, just go smush it back down, it’ll grow back together. On the bright side your grubs are gone!
This is why I scaled back my lawn renos. I’d put all this work in only to have dollar spot or friggin moles show up. I swore I was gonna put down Astro turf.
Rake area. Seed and level with dirt if needed. “First catch skunk”
Trap and 22lr
That’s some aggressive aeration!! You say skunks do that!!
So sorry for your loss ,it really was beautiful
They killed his lawn!
Weird I recently had a dream about 2 skunks should I be worried
Get a bunch of hot pepper flakes & spread all over
Buy a 5 lb cayenne pepper container from Amazon and spray bottle , cheesecloth to make some pepper spray, 2 tablespoons to 1 gallon of warm water . Mix and strain into the spray bottle. Spray around the edges of yard where you suspect they are coming from. Sprinkle some of the pepper as well and get some cheap flood solar lights to put on the ground to scare them off
Benjamin 25 caliber air rifle, will take out pretty much all garden pests.
That’s a bummer, man.
🫡🫡🫡🫡🫡 to this fellas lawn.
r/lebowski is leaking!
I’m having this problem too. I scattered silver Mylar balloons around the yard and it’s working to keep whatever is tearing up my yard away. I know it’s working because as soon as they lost their helium the critters tore up the yard. Got new balloons and no new patches of tore up turf. I also put grub killer down even though I read that it might be too late. I used 2.5x recommended amount though so… 🤞
Dudes lawn got a little dinged up
They’re cute, though.
Also, let’s not forget – let’s *not* forget, Dude – that keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, for uh, domestic, you know, within the city – that aint legal either.