Type: Fungus

Appearance: Summer patch causes irregular brown/straw-colored patches around the yard that get bigger throughout the summer. The outer edges look yellow or bronze. Grass blades eventually die from the tip down.

Summer patch isn’t the same as the brown patches you’ll find in your lawn from where the dog goes to the bathroom or where you left the kiddie pool out for too long. The biggest clue: you’ll find it all around your lawn!

Risk: Annual bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, and fine fescues are most at risk.

Timing: Summer patch, as the name suggests, shows up in the summer during periods of high humidity and prolonged heat. Warm, moist soil, and daytime temperatures reaching 85 degrees are preferable for this disease.

How to Control Summer Patch

Prevention

Fungicides can treat summer patch, and they are also a great preventive measure. For best results, apply the chemical in the spring according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Also, having a healthy lawn can help prevent a summer patch outbreak. Good lawn care practices include:

• Water Well: Your grass needs adequate water to thrive. It prefers long soakings about two to three times weekly instead of daily watering, depending on the rain levels from the week.
• Reseed patchy spots: Grass roots go deep into the ground and take up a lot of space, taking away the valuable real estate weeds need to thrive.
• Aerate Your Soil: Soil compaction keeps air and water from reaching the deeper levels of soil where grass roots grow, so only plants that grow nearer to the surface, like weeds, can thrive.
• Check Your Lawn’s pH Level: If your soil’s pH level isn’t neutral (about 7.0), your grass doesn’t have the right environment to thrive, but weeds might. To balance the pH level, your soil may also need applications of lime.

Treatment

Treatment is necessary to deal with summer patch before it kills your lawn. There are fungicides that work to cure the disease while preventing it from coming back. It can be tough to detect because it can survive in infected plant debris, invading root tissue and remaining undetected through the wintertime.

Shades of Green Lawn & Landscape knows just how to care for your lawn to prevent and treat fungal infections. And, if you’d like to have your best lawn year-round, we have a lawn care package for everyone’s needs and budget. Call us today at 765-771-9998 for a free quote.

Need Help with Summer Patch?

Call Shades of Green Lawn & Landscape today at 765-771-9998 and let's talk about how we can help you with Summer Patch and other Indiana lawn diseases.

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