Just like humans, our lawns can catch diseases. If your Louisville area lawn is showing symptoms like bare or brown patches, yellow-green streaks or pink and red threads on grass blades, or even mold, it’s safe to say that your lawn has been infected. If left untreated, a lawn disease can seriously weaken the health of your lawn and decrease the curb appeal of your home. Thankfully, there are steps you can take to help prevent your lawn from catching a disease, and the professionals at Turf Pro Outdoor Solutions are here to help.
Common Fall And Winter Lawn Diseases
One of the most common lawn diseases that occur in the fall is snow mold. Although this fungal disease can attack your lawn in the spring, summer, or fall, the symptoms are most obvious in the autumn when temperatures cool and the growth of your yard’s grass slows down and irregular growth becomes easier to spot. Additionally, the fungi that cause this disease need surface moisture, and cool temperatures, heavy dew, mist, and fewer daylight hours make autumn and winter prime time for the disease to affect your lawn.
Snow mold symptoms include patches of brown or straw-colored grass that start out small but can grow up to almost a foot across, and occasionally a white or pink cobweb-like substance on top of the grass blades. Snow mold fungi create spores that can easily be spread by the wind and foot traffic, so it’s important to treat this disease as soon as you see any signs of it to keep the disease from weakening or even killing your lawn.
Other Common Lawn Diseases That Can Affect Your Louisville Lawn
Other common lawn diseases that can arise in the fall are necrotic ring spot, red thread, stripe smut, and helminthosporium melting out or leaf spot. Necrotic ring spot typically begins to affect your lawn in the cooler, wetter fall, but you might not realize it until the spring season when large green, brown, or red-ringed sunken patches appear in your yard. Red thread is prevalent after periods of cool but humid weather, and symptoms include thin pink or red strands attached to the tips of grass leaves and water-soaked patches of grass ranging from an inch across to as much as a foot.
Like red thread, stripe smut also prefers cooler temperatures and manifests as yellow-green stripes on grass leaves that transition to grey and finally black. Once the disease reaches this stage, the black stripes will give off a black powder and the leaf will split, discolor to brown, and die, causing patchy grass growth throughout your yard.
Helminthosporium melting out or leaf spot is two stages of the same fungal disease that also prefers the cooler, wetter weather of fall and winter. In the initial leaf spot stage, dark reddish-brown or purple-colored spots will show up on grass leaves as the grass in your lawn gradually turns brown and becomes less dense. In the second helminthosporium melting out stage, large sections of the entire grass plant will begin to rot and big patches of your lawn can die.
What Causes Lawn Disease
Although these diseases sound devastating, there are some simple steps you can take to prevent your lawn from catching a disease or to treat it when it occurs. Most lawn diseases are caused by the introduction of a pathogen (typically a fungus or bacteria) into the host (your lawn), coupled with the right environmental conditions that allow the disease to take hold and spread. Any event that changes the environmental conditions in your lawn can cause stress that makes your yard more susceptible to pathogens. Factors that seem innocuous, such as cutting your lawn really short or experiencing an increase in the number of people walking over your lawn can have a big impact. Major events like drought, overwatering, and too little or too much nutrient or herbicide application can also be potential stressors. Any of these events and many others can weaken your lawn enough for a pathogen to slip in and take hold. 
How To Keep Your Lawn From Getting A Disease
The best strategy to prevent your lawn from catching a disease is to have a dependable lawn care program and follow several cultural practices that help maintain your lawn’s health and limit opportunities for pathogens to enter your lawn, take root, and spread. Occasionally, you may even need to apply a fungicide if the problem persists for several seasons. Here are a few tips to help keep your lawn free of disease throughout the year:
- Make sure your lawn has the right balance of nutrients, and make sure you are fertilizing it adequately
- Don’t water your lawn in the evening or late at night as this can cause water to sit on your lawn for long periods of time, creating the perfect environment for fungi to flourish
- Keep weeds in check so they don’t stress your lawn and compete with the grass plants for nutrients and water
- Make sure your lawn doesn’t have too much thatch, aerate and overseed if necessary
- Don’t mow your grass too short, mow more frequently, and make sure you pick up any clippings to avoid spreading disease or fungus to other areas of your lawn
- Invest in pest control to keep bugs from entering your yard and potentially introducing pathogens that can cause disease
Call Turf Pro Outdoor Solutions To Keep Your Louisville Area Lawn Healthy
If you want to make sure your Louisville lawn doesn’t contract a disease, call the experts at Turf Pro Outdoor Solutions. We offer a seven-step application lawn care program that includes fertilization, weed control, and pest control to make sure your lawn stays healthy and isn’t vulnerable to potential pathogens. You can visit our website to view more details on our lawn care program, mosquito control, and all of our additional services for residential and commercial customers. Feel free to reach out via our contact form for more information, or give us a call at 502-991-7600. Don’t forget to check back in with our monthly blog for more informative articles on lawn and garden care, and be sure to connect with us on Instagram and Facebook!
Just like humans, our lawns can catch diseases. If your Louisville area lawn is showing symptoms like bare or brown patches, yellow-green streaks or pink and red threads on grass blades, or even mold, it’s safe to say that your lawn has been infected. If left untreated, a lawn disease can seriously weaken the health of your lawn and decrease the curb appeal of your home. Thankfully, there are steps you can take to help prevent your lawn from catching a disease, and the professionals at Turf Pro Outdoor Solutions are here to help.
