Fall is coming, but summer’s not over yet! The days are still hot and summer heat means unwelcome stress to your lawn. And if you’ve been following our blogs, you know that stress on your lawn makes it vulnerable to disease. So what’s a common one that Ohio lawns have been seeing? Well you might have noticed it before. You walk through grass and all of a sudden your shoes have this orange dust all over them. That’s right, it’s lawn rust. This fungus is pretty common but that doesn’t mean we want our lawns to have it. Let’s take a look at how this fungus can be treated and avoided!

What Is It?

Lawn rust is a fungus that will typically appear on lawns during the summer or early fall. It targets the grass blades, and appears as small orange and brown spores. This is why your shoes will appear orange if you walk through a lawn that has this fungus. Luckily, this disease is mainly cosmetic, and will not do much damage to the grass plant itself. However, the presence of lawn rust still means that your lawn is stressed and can be vulnerable to many other diseases.

Why Did My Lawn Get it?

As mentioned, lawn rust is not uncommon to see in the late summer to early fall. If lawns are stressed and low on nitrogen, then they are more vulnerable to diseases such as this one. Lawn rust will spread fairly easily as well. The spores can be spread by people, pets, weather, and lawn mowers.

Prevention

A good way to keep any diseases away from your lawn is to maintain it well and keep it healthy! Make sure you follow the best practices when it comes to mowing and watering your lawn. Don’t mow your lawn too short and make sure you clean your equipment regularly. Water deeply and infrequently and do it early in the morning rather than later at night. You’ll also want to keep your lawn fertilized, to ensure that it doesn’t get too low on nitrogen. You can check out this article for more tips to keep lawn diseases away from your lawn!

If you’re worried about not having time to regularly maintain your lawn, you may want to consider hiring a professional lawn care company. Not only do they have lawn care programs to keep your lawn healthy, but the certified technicians are trained to recognize and treat lawn diseases that may come your way! You can check out our FREE Hiring Guide which has tips on how to hire the right company for you. Just click below to get your guide today!