Fungus Among Us: Don’t Wait to Treat Pathogens in Your Yard
Nature is unpredictable, isn’t it? Especially when it comes to your yard.
Just because you have a fungal disease or insect presence today doesn’t mean it’ll return next year. Certain insects are more active in some years than in others. Sometimes a heavier disease or insect problem is isolated to a few yards—or even just one.
We can’t pre-treat for many insects and pathologens—we have to wait until they appear to eradicate them.
See, fungal infections and insect traffic are affected by temperature, humidity, rainfall (or lack of it), mowing practices, irrigation, fertilization, and a ton of other incremental factors.
That’s why insect and disease applications aren’t included in our Lawn 360 program—they’re simply too hard to predict. We believe it’s irresponsible to charge you regularly for something that occurs with such irregularity.
However, when a brown spot on your grass does pop up, it’s worth paying for an extra application. Lawn issues are easily misidentified by the untrained eye, and they can get a lot worse if you apply the wrong treatment yourself. That’s why we encourage customers to call Lawn & Pest Solutions when something doesn’t look right.
A fungus probably won’t kill your entire lawn, but it can wreak havoc on your grass if it isn’t addressed. Infestations like this rob nutrients from your grass in order to grow themselves, causing your grass to starve, discolor, and thin out. Though you can take measures to guard against fungus, there’s no one to blame when an outbreak happens. It’s kind of like catching a cold—just a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong conditions.
A fungus can become active in your lawn almost any time of the year. It just needs three things to thrive:
– A susceptible host (grass stressed by drought, bad mowing practices, etc.)
– A conducive environment (temperature and moisture conditions ideal for fungal growth)
– A pathogen (spores of a fungus spread by wind, water, pets, mowing, or anything else)
At Lawn & Pest Solutions, we train our technicians to assess these factors and work together to make sure we have as full an understanding of the problem as we can. Sometimes a Lawn & Pest technician will take pictures of any problem areas so our entire team can offer its input, while at other times, your technician may ask you to keep an eye on the situation and contact them if the problem worsens.
The most common disease problems we see are:
– Dollar Spot – Almost exclusively found in Bermuda grass, dollar spot causes spots of your grass to turn brown or straw-colored. These spots can start as small as a grapefruit, but can grow to take over your whole yard.
– Rust – Most common in zoysia grass, this disease gets its name from the orange, rusty color it gives to leaf blades. To check for rust, take a white tissue and rub a few grass blades. If an orange color comes off on the tissue, you’ve got a rust problem.
– Gray Leaf Spot – Most common in St. Augustine grass, gray leaf spot does just that—it leaves large gray spots on your grass blades that grow larger as the infestation gets worse.
– Leaf Spot – Unrelated to gray leaf spot, this disease stunts the growth of your grass, eventually turning blades yellow and orange. If a part of your lawn seems to be growing slower than the rest, you may have a leaf spot issue.
—————
We do everything we can to make sure we’re solving the right problem for you, our customer. When it comes to your yard and our service, we want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. More importantly, we want your yard to be a place you can enjoy, and not a burden.
If any of these lawn problems sound familiar to you, get an estimate online or give us a call today. We’ll have a Lawn & Pest technician visit your yard to assess the issue as soon as possible.
