There are procedures on how to prevent fungus and disease on lawn. Lawn diseases like brown patches or powdery mildew are known to ravage lawns and ornamentals during the warm summer season.
That doesn’t mean fall and winter are any safer. There are diseases like snow mold and Pythium blight that thrive in the conditions.
Colder weather brings not only that, but some homeowners may be unintentionally cultivating environments that encourage disease and fungal growth.
In this article, you will go over several things you can do to prevent fungi and disease growth in your lawn over fall and winter.
How to Prevent Fungus and Disease on your Lawn
They certain things when ignored will promote the growth of fungus in your lawn. They are:
Turf Height
Turf height plays an important role on how to prevent fungus and disease on your lawn.
When kept overgrown, the grass will cast shade and cause your lawn to retain more water than your turf can handle and when it’s too short, your grass becomes vulnerable to damage from many sources.
As a general rule, you will want your grass to maintain a height of 3 inches. In order to promote deeper root growth for the cooling weather.
Deep-rooted grass is much stronger, holds more water, and stores more energy to help as the weather gets cooler. How often you mow your lawn will depend on its turf type.
Read also: How to Identify, Prevent and Get Rid of Fungus Gnats
How to Prevent Fungus and Disease
Lawns can consist of warm-season grass, cool-season grass, or a mix of both. This typically correlates with the region you live in.
If your lawn is composed of warm-season grass, like st. Augustine grass, Bermuda grass, or centipede grass, then you may need to mow once a month or none at all during the cooler fall and winter weather.
Cool-season grasses like fescue, perennial, ryegrass, or bluegrass are actively growing in colder temperatures. So you may need to mow about once per week, also see your lawn mower manual for more tips.
Read also: How to Get Rid of Brown Patch Fungus on Lawn
Lawn Aeration
Lawn aeration involves breaking up compact soil to allow more air to flow through aerating your lawn can make the difference between dealing with fungus or not.
Some grasses may grow weaker and compact soils making them more vulnerable to disease.
By aerating your turf, you’re facilitating the movement of air, water, and nutrients throughout your lawn soil ensuring all your grass can get what it needs to grow through the cold weather.
Read also: Fall Armyworms | Identification and How to Get Rid
How to Aerate your Lawn
There are several ways to aerate your lawn. Most homeowners should be able to at least breakaway Leaf, litter and deep etch their lawns.
These methods will help increase airflow on the surface, but really break up your soil. You’ll need to use either a spike aerator or a plug aerator for the best results.
You should aerate your lawn before applying fertilizer or any pre-emergents. What if your lawn is composed of cool-season grass or warm-season grass? You will need to be fertilized properly.
Fertilizers contain the three major nutrients needed for plants to grow, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.
Without sufficient nutrients, your lawn will become more vulnerable to disease. Different Lawns will require different mixes. However, as well as different application schedules based on whether your grass is actively growing or dormant.
If your lawn has warm-season grass, the latest break amended application window is September.
If your lawn has cool-season grass, the best time to apply for fall is actually September as well for a general application.
We recommend you use a fertilizer like Solutions 8-12-16 fall grow fertilizer. With this fertilizer, you can spray it over your lawn at a rate of 5 pounds per 1,000 square feet of the treatment area.
On cool-season turfs, you may want to apply fertilizer every 6 to 8 weeks. During its active growing season for warm-season turfs in fall and winter, limit the application to once in September until the temperature increases.
Read also: Tiny Bugs in the House: How to Identify
Water
Water is essential for all growth, but too much is just as damaging as too little excessive moisture. Not only will it invites pests, but it also creates the perfect conditions for diseases and fungi to thrive.
How to Apply Water on your Lawn the Right Way
You can avoid over saturating your lawn with too much water by watering it properly.
By watering your lawn, you’ll drive your turf’s roots deeper into the ground, strengthening your grass and encouraging greener growth.
To water your lawn properly. You’ll need to water it once a week in the morning with 1 inch of water, try to account for rainfall.
Your grass only needs 1 inch per week too much will invite fungal developments. If you water your lawn later in the day, there may not be enough time for the water to absorb into the roots before the sun evaporates it, or it could sit overnight on top of the soil, to invite disease.
Read also: Grass Spiders | Facts, Identification and How to Get Rid
Lawn Patches
For many homeowners, lawns disease and fungi may already exist there. If you have noticed seasonal activity, like patch formation or mushrooms growing every year then your lawn is already affected by the existing spores and pathogens in your grass.
Simply wait for the right additions in order to flare up. As the weather warms for summer, but then the cycle will repeat itself next season.
How to Prevent Lawn Patches
With the new spores, and pathogens left behind to get control of any diseases currently in your lawn.
You need to apply a fungicide product like Patch Pro fungicide. Patch Pro is made with propiconazole, a broad-spectrum ingredient used to control a variety of lawn diseases.
How to use
When using Patch Pro, you will apply it at a rate of 0.5 to 4 whole fluid ounces of product, over 1,000 square feet of the treatment area, depending on the targeted disease.
We recommend you make the application with a handheld sprayer or a backpack sprayer.
To mix, fill your sprayer with half the amount of water, then the appropriate amount of Patch Pro, and then keep the remaining half of the water.
Close the lids of the sprayer tank and shake to ensure an even agitation. Once your solution is ready, proceed to evenly broadcast.
Spray the entire amount of product over your lawn. If applied properly, then you should not be able to see any fungal development during fall and winter.
For continued control, keep up with applications every month to eliminate diseases and fungi from your lawn throughout the year.
Conclusion
Finally, just like during summer, there are fungi and diseases that can attack your lawn and in winter. There are many things you can do to prevent them as well.
Following up on these DIY guides on how to prevent fungus and diseases on your lawn, you will be able to control and prevent lawn diseases. Feel free to subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated with our latest DIY pest control guide.
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