Identify Red Thread Lawn Disease
The first time you notice a red-pink patch of grass in your lawn, it may seem as if the light is playing tricks on you. But when taking another look at this unusual phenomenon closer up and more carefully than before – theres no mistaking what causes these beautiful colors: They are caused by disease! The cause could be named red thread,” which has distinctive looking cotton candy like strands wrapped around its blade tips or protruding from them . However despite how interesting appearance might be supposed to make identification easyit isn’t always so simple because many different diseases have similar symptoms.
Continue To Monitor For Fungal Diseases
After treating the problem, continue to monitor your turf for signs of fungal infections. Some fungal diseases are seasonal and may return the following year, requiring you to repeat the treatment. In the meantime, maintain correct mowing techniques.
If possible, collect grass clippings as you mow. Collecting clippings minimises the spread of fungal diseases, as most types of fungi are easily distributed throughout a lawn. Avoiding excess foot traffic also cuts down on the spread of fungal diseases.
How To Prevent Lawn Fungus
In most cases, preventing lawn fungus is a simple matter of proper maintenance. Limiting moisture, ensuring access to adequate water and nutrients, mowing to a correct height, and choosing the right fertilizer will almost always yield a fungus-free lawn. If this sounds like a lot of workwell, it is.Dont worry, though, because we have just the solution! A quality lawn care program like we offer at Blades of Green includes everything you need to prevent fungus. Check out our different lawn care services and see how we can help you finally have the lawn that youve always wanted.
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Best Manual Lawn Aerator
Discover the best Manual Lawn Aerators in Best Sellers.Aeration promotes healthy growth of grass. There are many products out there which can be used for improving soil aeration to enhance the growth of lawns. Not all of them offer the best results. You should always choose carefully.
The fungusnatural home remedies
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How To Use Soapy Water For Lawn Fungus
To effectively kill off lawn fungi such as mushrooms and toadstools using soapy water, we recommend following the procedure elaborated below:
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Is Lawn Fungus Treatment Effective
For the treatment to be effective, it is important that the person applying the treatment use the correct lawn fungus treatment. Contact fungicides do not penetrate the blades. Therefore, they must remain on the surface of the leaf blade for about 3-8 days to be effective. The primary purpose of contact fungicides is to form a barrier, which prevents fungus from entering the leaves, so it typically should be applied before the disease begins.
Systemic fungicides will enter the grass blade and go to the roots so, they work from the inside out. This type of fungicide is longer lasting than contact fungicides. This kind of treatment does require watering for the fungicide to reach the roots. One of the main disadvantages with systemics is the chance the disease will develop a resistance to the fungicide.
It is important to keep in mind that some fungicides can be dangerous to the environment. They can be especially dangerous if the user does not use it correctly. So, if you are not experienced with fungicides, it is a good idea to contact a local lawn care service. They will be able to evaluate the problem areas and apply the appropriate lawn fungus treatment.
For more information on lawn fungus or to schedule an appointment for one of our technicians to evaluate and apply lawn fungus treatment to your lawn, contact our team at Think Green Lawn Service by calling 648-2556.
How Does Lawn Fungus Treatment Work And How Effective Is It
Jun 20, 2020Lawn Fungicide Treatment
Regardless of how lush and beautiful your lawn happens to be, it is almost inevitable that you will have some type of problem that requires lawn fungus treatment. To know how to treat lawn fungus, it is helpful to understand what lawn fungus is and the various types of treatments that are available. Depending on the amount of rainfall Georgia experiences and how hot or cool the weather is, several different types of lawn disease may invade even the healthiest of lawns.
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Will Lawn Fungus Go Away On Its Own
Unfortunately, lawn fungus will not disappear if left untreated. The most effective way to manage yard fungus is to use a fungicide and practice good turf management. Fungicides are designed to inhibit energy production at the cellular level and to harm cell membranes, which eventually kills the fungi that is attacking your grass. As with any type of pesticide, homeowners should do their research to identify the type of fungicide needed to manage a particular type of lawn fungus and make sure solutions are applied carefully and according to manufacturer instructions. Make sure to avoid overusing fungicide to prevent additional damage to your grass. If you are unsure about how to correctly apply treatments, contact a trusted pest professional.
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How To Prevent And Treat Lawn Fungal Diseases
A simple change in your lawn care practices may be enough to prevent or eradicate lawn fungal disease. At other times nature may deliver a soggy spring or summer heat wave that just cant be helped. Stressed or unhealthy lawns are much more likely to develop disease so the better you care for your lawn, the better the grass will be able to handle the natural conditions in your area.
Follow these steps to help take control of fungal diseases in your lawn:
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Common Lawn Fungal Diseases
There are quite a few fungal diseases that can impact lawns, but theyre usually pretty specialized, targeting specific lawn types, at certain times of year, under certain conditions. For example:
- Brown patch strikes during hot, humid weather.
- Fusarium blight prefers hot, drought conditions.
- Dollar spot tends to spring up when nights are cool and dew is heavy.
Before treating your lawn, its important to identify not only whether your lawn indeed has a fungal disease, but to identify the fungus itself. All fungicides arent the same, and some diseases can be easily treated by making changes in your lawn care.
Knowing your grass type and recent weather conditions can make it easier to narrow down, but you may need help in figuring out exactly whats going on. Your local cooperative extension center is your best resource for determining which diseases are most common in your area, or you can take a small baggie of the infected grass to your local garden center for help.
How To Control Brown Patch
At the point where you need to control an outbreak of brown patch, dont reach for a control material right away, as we have a few natural alternatives for you to try first. First, take a rake and fluff your grass where the brown patch has occurred. This will help speed up the drying process, so the brown patch fungi can return to dormancy.
When fertilizing, use organic fertilizers to provide the right blend of nutrients to prevent disease.
Hopefully, brown patch wont be a huge problem for you this year, but if it is, just rememberwith a little patience and some perseverance, you can use these methods to coerce the brown patch fungi back into remission, and keep it there.
For more information on lawn diseases, contact us today!
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Fungal Lawn Symptoms To Watch For
First examine your lawn for signs of dampness, squishy roots and stems or fine white threads in your soil.
Then, signs your lawn may have a fungal disease include:
- White, yellow, or brown patches or rings that grow in diameter.
- Thin patches of frayed, distorted, or discolored grass blades.
- Gray, black, red, orange, or purple spots on blades or stems.
- Gray, black, or pink powdery or threadlike coatings on and around grass blades.
- Areas of darkened, wet-looking, slimy, or greasy-looking grass.
Diy Fungicides For The Garden
Learning how to make your own fungicide gives you control of the ingredients, many of which are already in your home. Here are some of the more popular items for use in making fungicide for lawns and gardens:
- Mixing baking soda with water, about 4 teaspoons or 1 heaping tablespoon to 1 gallon of water .
- Dishwashing soap, without degreaser or bleach, is a popular ingredient for homemade plant fungicide.
- Cooking oils are often mixed into homemade plant fungicide to make them cling to leaves and stems.
- Pyrethrin leaves that come from the painted daisy flower are widely used in commercial fungicide for plants. Grow your own painted daisies and use the flowers as a fungicide for plants. Dry the flower heads, then grind them or soak overnight in 1/8 cup of alcohol. Mix with up to 4 gallons of water and strain through cheesecloth.
- Bordeaux mixture for use during the dormant season can control some fungal and bacterial diseases. You can make your own Bordeaux mix with ground limestone and powdered copper sulfate. The most recommended strength for dormant application is 4-4-50. Mix 4 parts of each with 50 gallons of water. If you need less, like for a gallon, reduce the recipe for this homemade plant fungicide to 6.5 to 8 teaspoons of the copper sulfate and 3 tablespoons limestone to 1 pint of water.
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Will Powdery Mildew Go Away
Powdery mildew actually is not a single disease. A good cleanup is your best bet for controlling powdery mildew next year, because the fungi can survive the winter in leaves on the ground, stems, and dormant leaf and flower buds. Collect all the diseased leaves and cut back the affected stems, Yiesla said.
Is Laundry Detergent An Effective Lawn Fungus Treatment
While laundry detergent will effectively kill lawn fungus, itll also kill your desirable turfgrass. This is because dish soap/laundry detergent contains surfactants that work to make oil and dirt molecules water soluble. These surfactants tend to be indiscriminate, killing off all plants that they come into contact with.
Insecticidal soap- on the other hand- doesnt contain any chemical surfactants and is simply a combination of natural oils/fats with an alkali such as sodium hydroxide. However, insecticidal soap will kill insects but not fungi mycelium- leaving you with laundry detergent/dish soap as your most effective option.
Laundry soap kills fungi such as mushrooms by neutralizing the hyphae to inhibit mycelium growth. However, its advisable to go for a mild dish soap instead of a strong laundry detergent, as the latter will leave more visible damages on your desirable turfgrass.
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Sharpen The Blades Of Your Lawn Mower
Your lawn mower blades should be sharpened in the Spring before the mowing season starts. Dull lawn mower blades tear off the tips of your grass instead of actually cutting them. The resulting frayed grass blades are more likely to develop fungal diseases compared to clean cut, sharp blades of grass.
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What Are The Causes Of Fungal Infection
One of the most common reasons can be that you are mowing your grass too low. Other reasons include variation in temperature and humidity, drought, compacted soil in your field, wrong grass type, overfeeding, and using too many fertilizers can result in such conditions.
Let us see how we can make sure if its a fungus occupying your lawn.
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Mow The Diseased Parts
Grass fungus spreads quickly, which is why mowing is a suitable solution to control it. When mowing, pay attention to the infected parts. Remove the grass clippings, fallen leaves, or debris that could be sitting on your lawn. Dont leave the grass clippings as they still carry live fungi that may spread to the rest of the grass.
On the other hand, mowing the diseased parts is only effective if the infestation is still fresh. Prolonged fungus infestation might need other control measures before mowing.
Natural Remedies For Lawn Fungus
There are many natural remedies for lawn fungus. These include baking soda solutions, neem oil, and compost teas. For the best results, you should use these natural options early in the season as a preventative rather than waiting to treat your lawn after you already have a fungus.
Neem Oil
This is one of the better natural solutions available. Dilute 2 oz of neem oil into 1 gallon of water. Apply 2.5 gallons of the spray solution per 1,000 sq ft. You will typically need to apply this solution two or three times on a 7 14 day interval to ensure effective control.
Baking Soda
Using a weak baking soda solution to treat lawn fungus issues can be effective but you must be cautious. Baking soda is a salt and like all salts, can damage your lawn.
Grass type and environmental conditions such as rainfall, air temperature and lawn stress all affect how your grass reacts to the baking soda, so you run the risk of doing more harm than good.
Compost Tea
While the use of compost teas are generally considered a good way to increase the organic content of your lawn, research on using them as a natural fungicide is limited. When applied in the spring, compost teas will help to boost the overall health of your lawn and can help your lawn to be less susceptible to getting a fungus in late spring or summer.
However, compost teas alone are usually insufficient in preventing turfgrass diseases.
Clove Oil
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Identify Pest Problems Correctly
- Inspect your lawn often to detect pests and other problems early.
- Plant damage may not be caused by pests. Plants can be injured by poor growing conditions, poor maintenance practices, or environmental problems .
- You need to identify the pest to look up information that will help you decide how to control the pest and to prevent further problems. See Pest control tips for information about specific insect pests.
- Beneficial insects may be mistaken for pests. For example, ants are sometimes considered pests because they make visible mounds on lawns. But they do not attack the grass.
- In a healthy lawn, beneficial insects can keep pest insects in check. For more information on beneficial insects, see Understanding your lawnâs lifecycle.
- If you are having trouble, your local garden centre may be able to help you in identifying a pest, and there are many good sources of information on the Internet or in reference books.
How To Treat Snow Mold Disease
Rake the damaged spots gently to aerate the grass blades and help dry them out. Remove any thatch layer that is more than 1/2 inch thick. This should not be done until the lawn has dried out somewhat and has been mowed two or three times, as mechanical dethatching machines can badly damage new grass shoots in the spring. Mow the lawn at a shorter than normal length until the mold is no longer actively growing. Taller grass will hold more moisture, which fosters fungal growth. Especially in the fall, mow to a short height to minimize the moisture that might be trapped under the first snowfall of the season. Bagging up all grass clippings for the last few mowing’s in the fall will also help.
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Eliminate As Much Shady Space As Possible
Although it can be nearly impossible to eliminate everything from your yard that can cause an obstruction to the sun, cutting large branches and trimming down bushes will help reduce the fungi buildup that is normally associated with shady spots.
Fungus thrives in moist, dark locations that typically dont see very much sunlight.
Causes Of Lawn Fungal Disease
Lawns are full of fungal spores that are usually harmless, although certain conditions can cause them to germinate and lead to the harmful diseases mentioned above.There are several causes of lawn fungus, most commonly:
- Underwatering
- Weather conditions
Whilst some of these are uncontrollable factors â the unpredictable British weather for example â keeping an eye on how much or how little you are watering your turf and mowing to appropriate heights are both aspects of lawncare that you can control.
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Why Do Mushrooms Grow In Lawns
You probably know that mushrooms are a type of fungi. We tend to think of them as a type of toadstool, with a cap, stem, and gills underneath the cap, but they can include other types of fungi, that grow in all sorts of wonderful shapes and sizes.
Mushrooms typically thrive in damp, dark environments that have plenty of rich decaying matter. But you absolutely must not confuse lawn mushrooms with the species of mushrooms we like to eat, this can prove fatal or at least nauseating at best.
