BROWN PATCH
(RHIZOCTONIA SOLANI)
“BROWN PATCH”. Is a fungal disease can do serious damage to an otherwise healthy lawn in only a few hours. Most lawns are at risk during warm, humid weather. Ryegrass and tall fescue lawns are most susceptible.
Conditions that promote brown patch include temperatures above 80 degrees combined with high humidity. Severe cases of brown patch usually start when late afternoon or evening showers occurs on warm, muggy days. Afternoon or evening watering can cause the same conditions. Mowing equipment can multiply the effects of an otherwise minor infection as mower wheels and blades spread the disease in streaks across wet turf. Whether your home is in Lenexa, Leawood, or Overland Park, homes in the Johnson County area are susceptible to brown patch.
Fungicide applications will protect newly infected grass for 14 – 28 days, while the grass recovers. Applications should be repeated as necessary while infectious conditions persist.
Custom Lawn can apply the proper fungicide that will protect the lawn for 21 days. We offer no guarantee for this service since changes to the lawn’s environment are necessary in order to provide sustainable control of the disease. Thus repeated applications may be needed as long as warm, humid conditions persist.
Fungicides alone are not enough. Brown Patch spreads rapidly when the grass blades are continuously wet for too many hours. These wet conditions can be the result of heavy dew, late afternoon or evening rains, improper watering, poor air circulation or poor surface drainage.
GRUBWORMS
Grub worms are the larval stage of several types of beetles, but all can damage or kill your lawn in a very short time. An annual preventative treatment is the only practical way to protect your lawn. Merit, or another product that contains Imidacloprid, applied in early-mid Summer will control enough grubs to prevent noticeable damage in most cases, but complete control is rarely practical or necessary. Slow but effective, imidacloprid works from within your lawn’s root system. When grubs eat any part of your lawn they get sick, stop eating and eventually die.
Do not expect your technician to be able to spot grub damage before it occurs or to be able to differentiate it from heat, drought or disease damage. All of these symptoms can be nearly identical and usually appear in combination. Thus making early identification of grub activity nearly impossible in its early stages.. Even an expert cannot positively identify early onset of grub damage until the turf is so severely damaged that the turf pulls up like new sod to reveal grubs underneath. It takes very few grubs per square foot to damage a dry lawn and, like new sod, the only way to keep a grub-damaged lawn alive is to keep it constantly wet.
Once grub damage begins to appear, usually in late August to early September, curative treatments require a different approach. In that situation, Dylox will provide fast acting and effective results. This product must be watered in very heavily to be effective. The continued appearance of live grubs near the surface can be expected since new grubs will rise to the surface throughout the fall and because it takes a day or two for the newly arrived grubs to get sick and even longer for most of them to die. If in doubt, place a hand full of grubs on a warm sidewalk. If most of the grubs can easily crawl away they are not sick and need more time near the surface and/or another application of Dylox (and more watering).
Buying a preventative grub treatment is like buying insurance. Most of the time you don’t need the treatment, but in those years that your lawn get’s grubs the treatment is worth ten times the cost. We recommend preventative care, but you have to make the call, and the time to make that call is right now. Call Custom Lawn for grub control today. Your lawn in Overland Park depends on it!
