Last week we talked about working with a lawn care company to help keep your lawn looking great.  Scouting and monitoring your yard when your service technician isn’t around is a great place to start.  Diseases in lawns are a HUGE topic, and we won’t even begin to scrape the surface.  However, if you suspect that you may have a disease here are some things to consider.

Causes

Disease are often present on all of your plants in your landscape, but they are often not active.  Disease need certain conditions to be visible and causing damage.  One of the most important parts of disease growth is the environment.  Warm, humid conditions are often ideal for disease development.  Although you can not alter the climate, work to keep humidity down by watering during the early morning hours.  Watering your plants between 4 am and 10 am is ideal.  

Scouting

If your lawn has a disease, it will often be most visible at dawn.  This is the time of the day when we have enough light to see activity, and also night time dews have collected on the leaves.  Things to look for are cottony looking substances (mycelium) often growing in patches.  Some disease can be pink, white, or grayish in color.

What YOU Can Do!

If you suspect disease, and you have seen active growing mycelium, contact your service technician.  Disease in home lawns are often less damaging than on golf courses or sports fields, but they can be treated.  Your service technician can help you set up a plan of attack to keep your lawn looking it’s best!

Free Lawn Fungus Guide!

Not sure what to look for in your lawn when it comes to lawn disease?  Use our FREE Lawn Disease Guide to ID and find the solutions to your lawn disease problems!

Author: Andrew Muntz received his Master’s of Science in Turfgrass science and his Bachelors of Science in Landscape Horticulture at The Ohio State University, Columbus OH.