Treat brown patch fungus

With a little care and Scotts by your side, your problems with brown patch will be a thing of the past. Whether you are just starting out, maintaining or troubleshooting, you'll find advice and answers here for all your lawn care needs. Something looking not quite right on your lawn, but you're not sure what it is? Use this guide to common lawn diseases to help you ID it and learn how to treat it. Skip to main content. Customize by ZIP Code. Featured Articles. Important Lawn Maintenance Projects for the Fall.

The Benefits of Fall Feeding. Featured Products. Lawn Disease Control If your lawn is suffering from fungus or other diseases start here. Here's what to do. Tall fescue Perennial ryegrass Bentgrass. Follow these guidelines: Plant disease-resistant varieties and seed mixtures. Reduce the amount of time the grass blades are wet. The center of this diseased area has begun to recover as the fungal activity is moving outward and because the disease primarily targets the above ground portion of the turfgrass.

Brown patch on turfgrass tall fescue lawn often has a smoky brown perimeter where there is active fungal growth. This coloration may be more apparent during the early morning hours. Infected warm-season grasses rarely have leaf spots but instead have rotted leaf sheaths where the leaf blades attach to the stem near the soil surface.

Therefore, it is diagnostic for the disease if one tugs gently on the leaves in the recently discolored perimeter and the blades pull free. Close inspection of cool-season grass blades reveals small, irregular, tan leaf spots with dark-brown borders. Bentgrass may not show individual lesions, but leaves will turn brown and shrivel. Newly seeded tall fescue in the spring is more susceptible and more easily killed than mature fescue seeded in the fall. All types of warm-season or cool-season lawn grasses grown in South Carolina can be affected by large patch or brown patch, respectively.

Unfortunately, there are currently no turfgrass species entirely resistant to these diseases available. Brown patch is the most common and important disease of tall fescue in the Southeast. In most cases, affected areas of mature turfgrass are able to recover, but tall fescue lawns less than a year old can be killed.

Kentucky tall fescue, which was once a more commonly planted turfgrass for home lawns, has more resistance to brown patch than all turfgrass tall fescue cultivars. Large patch is the most common disease affecting centipedegrass, although all warm-season turfgrasses are susceptible. The best way to prevent brown patch or large patch in the home lawn is by following good lawn care practices.

This is much easier and less expensive than the use of fungicides and can be very effective. Fungicides can be difficult to rely upon for controlling brown patch and large patch in the home lawn, but regular applications can vastly improve the lawn appearance. Preventatively, fungicides should be applied to turfgrass tall fescue in the spring and early summer. Frequently brown patch symptoms become obvious around the first week of May in the Upstate. Curative treatments may need to be made regularly during the summer if rainfall is frequent.

Warm season turfgrasses also require fungicide treatments in the spring but are especially important in the fall for best disease control. Although the large patch fungus is active in the cooler weather of fall, symptoms usually are more prominent in the spring as the warm season turfgrasses are greening up.

Make the first application on warm season turfgrasses in early October for the fall and repeat the application approximately 2 to 4 weeks later, but before the turfgrass goes dormant. Re-apply a fungicide treatment in April for the spring application. You can stop work when the efforts show results. The time and effort required will depend entirely on the severity and persistence of the infestation—minor problems may be very easy to solve, while combatting widespread infestation can be a year-long endeavor.

Always try to control brown patch fungus by adjusting cultural practices before reaching for chemical fungicides. Brown patch appears as irregular circular patches in the lawn that are brownish-yellow in color and range from 6 inches to several feet in diameter. The affected leaves usually remain upright, and close inspection shows lesions on the leaves that are tan in color and irregular in shape with a dark brown border.

White, cottony, mycelium can be found on dew-covered turf in the early part of the morning. The ring itself is most visible in the morning. Sometimes grass within the ring is entirely killed, creating a sunken look to the patch, but more often the grass inside the patch simply becomes thinner than the surrounding lawn. Many cases of brown patch can be cured simply by improving air circulation in the lawn, which reduces the humidity that favors the fungus.

The best way to do this is to aerate and dethatch the lawn annually. Dethatching can be done manually, with a stiff bow rake or dethatching rake, or with power equipment available for lease at home centers and tool rental outlets.

Aeration is normally done with a power rental tool, or by a hired professional lawn service. Brown patch fungus thrives in wet, fertile conditions, so the response to ongoing lawn problems is to reduce feeding of your lawn and make sure watering practices are appropriate.

Avoid feeding your lawn during hot and humid weather, and reduce the amounts of fertilizer used. Fertilizer manufacturers often recommend repeated heavy feedings, but your lawn is often healthier with just one or two light feedings each year. Watering is probably not necessary at all if you are getting 1 inch of rainfall per week, But if you do water, do it early in the day so the grass can dry out fully before nightfall.

If dew is collecting on your lawn each morning, your lawn probably does not need to be irrigated at all. Standing dew can be removed by dragging a water hose over the lawn, which will lower the humidity that causes brown patch disease. Lawn care experts say that fungicide treatment is appropriate only for high-value ryegrass and bentgrass turf blends; most lawns typically recover without chemical treatments. The first spray of fungicide should be applied immediately after the symptoms first appear, especially if hot and humid weather is expected.

Although fungicides can be purchased by homeowners, it's best to deal with a lawn care company staffed by professionals who are trained to diagnose and treat lawn diseases. As this any chemical application, it's best to spot-treat diseased areas rather than apply chemicals broadly over the entire lawn.

Where all other efforts fail you may need to reseed with a turfgrass variety that has known resistance to this fungus. A variety of grasses are available with moderate resistance to the Rhizoctonia fungus. If a brown patch is an annual occurrence, consider top-seeding your lawn with resistant grasses.