Disease Control Services

Say Goodbye to Brown Patch, Dollar Spot, Rust, and Other Lawn Diseases with Help from LawnWorks

Lawn diseases caused by fungal pathogens can quickly impact the health, color, and overall appearance of your turf. When left untreated, these issues can lead to thinning grass, dead patches, and expensive lawn repair.

Because lawn disease often looks similar to drought stress or insect damage, identifying the true cause is not always simple without professional experience.

What about mowing height? How short should I mow my grass?

Mowing height and using sharp blades help. If you mow with your old blades and they’re dull, it really tears and creates wounds in the turf plants, which makes them more susceptible to these fungal pathogens. To find proper mowing height this is a great resource: https://extension.illinois.edu/lawns/mowing-your-lawn and try not to cut more than a third off the grass leaf during a single mowing. This will help keep the lawn healthy too.

I’ve mowed and watered properly; what else can I do for better lawn disease management?

The last thing is thatch management. Thatch kind of acts like a sponge and holds that moisture at the surface. All of these fungal pathogens are going to require a certain amount of moisture for a certain amount of time. So anything you can do to properly manage the level of moisture at the surface really helps to reduce lawn disease pressure.

If you still have lawn disease issues after implementing these best practices, call LawnWorks.

For people who seem to have chronic lawn problems year after year with specific diseases, we start to look at and recommend overseeding with newer varieties of turf that have better resistance to those pathogens.

It helps when customers communicate with our lawn care company.

If you see something, say something. You don’t have to know what it is, but if something looks “off” in your lawn, let us know immediately. We’ll come out, take a look, and diagnose the lawn issue. It could be a disease, it could be an insect issue, or it could just be drought stress, maybe some summer dormancy. But I encourage good, timely communication.

Visible lawn diagnosis helps us manage your lawn care too.
At this point, what it takes is for one of our managers to actually get out and diagnose the issue in person. We have to evaluate the disease and determine, hey, what is our next course of action? Is a fungicide necessary? A lot of times it is. A lot of times it’s not, too.

We can go back to those cultural practices and talk to people and say, hey, what does your watering program look like? And if they’re watering at the wrong times of day, I say, hey, let’s do this first instead of putting products on.

Let’s see what you can do to reduce the pressure. If it doesn’t subside by then, then we can look at chemical options like a fungicide, and sometimes just fertility is needed.

Certain fungal infections thrive in low-nitrogen conditions. So if it’s been a while since the last fertilizer application, it’s like, hey, you do your part with the proper watering and proper mowing, we’ll get a little nitrogen on this, and sometimes that’ll help it grow out.

“So we use fungicides only if it’s necessary. It sounds odd because I’m in the business of applying chemicals, but I don’t like to apply something if it’s not needed.” ~ Josh Cull, owner