6 Lawn Diseases to Watch out for This Summer

6 Lawn Diseases to Watch out for This Summer

Just like the human body, your lawn is also prone to disease. You need to take very good care of it and have it treated by a lawn service whenever it does signs of illness. Among the lawn diseases to watch out are:

1. Leaf Spot

This is a fungal disease, which discolours your turf and makes it turn yellow. It gives the leaves the appearance of little cigarette burns. The leaf spot disease is likely to attack your lawn during moist, warm and cloudy weather.

Besides protecting your lawn with a fertilization program and regularly taking care of it by engaging in healthy lawn practices such as aeration and properly watering it, if the disease attacks, you can use a fungicide to cure the affected areas and stop its spread. For best results, calling a lawn care professional is highly advised.

2. Red Thread

Red thread causes irregularly shaped patches that appear tanned or red all over your lawn, especially on the grass plant stems and leaves. It targets perennial ryegrass, tall fescues, and Kentucky bluegrass during the cold season. Red thread often disappears without treatment when warm weather kicks in. However, this process can drag on for a long time. To treat it promptly, spray a fungicide on the affected spot to stop its progression. Fertilizing your lawn properly can also quickly get rid of red thread. Such fertilizer should be phosphorous and nitrogen-rich to ensure that your lawn is healthy throughout.

3. Dollar Spot

The name aside, dollar spot has nothing to do with money. The disease is known to hibernate during winter only to ravage your lawn when summer commences. It is caused by a fungus called Sclerotinia homoeocarpa. Like most fungal diseases, it starts small and can simmer unnoticed before spreading in a circular pattern. Its symptoms include small, yellow spots that appear on individual grass blades. At its advanced stages, the affected glass blades turn completely white. Untreated, the disease can spread throughout your lawn. The disease thrives in rainy weather.

Treatment involves applying fungicides on the affected areas to stop its spread.

4. Necrotic Ring Spot

This is another fungal disease that shows up on your lawn as a ring-shaped area with dying or dead grass. It mainly thrives in areas with dry soils and high temperatures of over 80 degrees. In terms of treatment, it is recommended that you hire a professional. However, you can stop it by aerating your soil and spraying it with the appropriate fungicide.

5. Brown Patch

This is one of the most destructive among all lawn diseases. It spreads frighteningly fast and starts out as a circular area featuring dead brown grass encircled by a dark, narrow ring. Both its prevention and treatment can be taken care of by fungicides.

6. Zoysia Patch

This is a soil-borne disease, which starts out as a small circle of about six inches but gradually spreads to almost twenty feet. It can be treated using appropriate fungicides. To prevent its outbreak, there are preventative fungicides that conveniently keep it at bay.

As the summer treads along, your lawn is likely to experience one or more diseases, mostly fungal. While prevention is better than cure, once disease breaks out on your lawn, it needs to be treated immediately.

Most of the fungal diseases that break out on your lawn can easily be treated using fungicides. In some cases, proper application of fertilizer can competently deal with the problem.

In one or two cases, especially for red thread disease, which usually breaks out during the cold season, the onset of summer could easily get rid of the disease, even without treatment.

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