# Brown/yellow grass amid green



## Pezking7p (May 23, 2020)

Brand new member and very new to lawn care. I've been struggling to get my new sodded lawn to look great. The sod was laid in April 2019, I watered it well and it looked great through most of the summer last year. Later into summer and early fall it started to get what appears to be loads of dead grass amongst very healthy green grass. A rake will pull up all the dead grass (I assume it's dead?)and leave behind the green.

This spring the yard started to look better, I used some weed and feed, but now the yellow/brown grass is happening again, starting in the last few weeks. I have not been irrigating, but it hasn't been particularly hot. No other treatments this year.

I'm out on a hunt to figure out my next steps to fix this and to have the best lawn on my block, so of course I'm here. I'm headed off to get a soil test this afternoon but I thought I'd ask here what might cause this in case it's not related to a soul issue.


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## davegravy (Jul 25, 2019)

Welcome!

Looks like what I and a lot of people are getting this year. Leaf spot / melting out fungus. Something about the weird spring we had perhaps.

General recommendations are back off watering - make sure you do any watering early in the morning. Limit fertilizer applications, bag your clippings when you mow, and if you have fungicides it might be a good time to apply them.

Also I saw some torn leaf tips - good idea to sharpen your mower blades.

Read through the cool season guide if you haven't already.


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## Pezking7p (May 23, 2020)

Thanks Dave.

I did some research on fungus, then went and started looking closely at my grass (swmbo snapped a great pic of me on my hands and knees with my face in the grass lel).

I didn't see any spots that looked like leaf spot, or freaky any spots. I did see that all of the yellow grass is on the outside of a nice looking green shaft (terminology?) and most had new growth coming up from the center.

Does this change the prognosis?

And yah, I'm going to be sharpening blades today.


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## Pezking7p (May 23, 2020)

Extra follow up: I see I can get a pretty broadly acting fungicide (Scott's diseaseEx) for pretty cheap. Is there any downside to just spreading this regardless of knowing what is impacting my grass?


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## rockinmylawn (Mar 25, 2018)

Welcome to the boards & life in the transition zone. 
I've been exhibiting same issues on my tall fescue the last week or so.
We've had a pretty mild spring here in central VA but interspersed with some pretty good weekly soakers too so up to a week ago the grass looked great.

Then I noticed that the humidity started moving in and temps over night stayed in the 60's last week esp. with. the all day rains. 
And the yellowing or pinkish hue started appearing all over my grass.

That's what I spent yesterday doing after my mow: laying down Disease Ex.

Based on these 2 sources below: My guess is brown patch but DEx will also hit meltingout & leafspot also with the main ingredient Azoxy.

https://thelawncarenut.us12.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e1452cb50e912758dd145e97b&id=85ab1cd937&e=be9d202270



g-man said:


> This is a great article.
> 
> http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/ppa/ppa1/ppa1.pdf


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@rockinmylawn do you know if that guide is one of the free ones? I don't want any trouble with LCN. It doesn't have a copyright statement anywhere in the ebook.


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## Pezking7p (May 23, 2020)

So, I found another NC lawn care book from NCSU, which states that fertilizing tall fescue after April 15 greatly increases the chances for brown patch. It turns out I applied weed and feed about 2 weeks before I noticed the change in my lawn (around May 1).

According to the article you listed @rockinmylawn The Scotts DiseaseEx contains the only useful fungicide against brown patch. So I guess I'm spreading a bag of that this afternoon before it starts raining.

I'll be back with results hopefully (though I'm not sure if I will be able to get much done before fall, based on what I'm reading).

Thanks for the input! I've got a lot more to read.


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## rockinmylawn (Mar 25, 2018)

@g-man It was sent to my email as part of free newsletter signup.

My guess is that they are collecting my email for marketing purposes & if they are mentioning public brick & mortar brands, then it is in the public domain.

And it's downloading into my Google drive without PW protection nor asking me for permissions to my GDrive - so no it's not copyrighted.


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## rockinmylawn (Mar 25, 2018)

Pezking7p said:


> So, I found another NC lawn care book from NCSU, which states that fertilizing tall fescue after April 15 greatly increases the chances for brown patch. It turns out I applied weed and feed about 2 weeks before I noticed the change in my lawn (around May 1).
> 
> According to the article you listed @rockinmylawn The Scotts DiseaseEx contains the only useful fungicide against brown patch. So I guess I'm spreading a bag of that this afternoon before it starts raining.
> 
> ...


The NCSU folks are a great resource also. 
My fert was done March & April with last app being 6-7 weeks ago.

And yes fertilizing later in the spring in our zone ie adding Nitrogen - increases disease chances.

I am debating adding a slower & lower Nitrogen fert to cover the next 3 months with a larger potasium K number to help the stressed fescue. Something like an 8-1-8 or a 7-0-20.

But I've got some time esp. if the Disease Ex doesn't do it's job, then no need to pour more Nitrogen on it.


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## j4c11 (Apr 30, 2017)

Do you know what was in the sod? I think I see some bluegrass in there, and it looks to me like a different type of grass dying in between the fescue. While it has not been that hot, it has been dry (until beginning of this week), and my bluegrass would have definitely been dead/dormant had I not watered the past couple prior weeks.


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## Powhatan (Dec 15, 2017)

Mid this month I also noticed yellowing helminthosporium disease blades, same thing happened last year in May. Last year I lowered HOC to allow more air flow. Mid Jun I noticed some brown patch patches forming so I sprayed neem oil on cooler days about two weeks apart. In mid Jul I broadcasted low nitrogen slow release organic fertilizer to feed and help heal stressed grass. By mid Aug the brown patch areas had stopped spreading, the yellowing disease blades were no longer noticeable in large quanties (still had some), and the whole lawn was greening up. I didn't use synthetic fungicides last year so maybe I got lucky with turf disease that didn't explode into something major. I plan to use neem oil and organic fertilizer again this summer.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I posted this in another thread a few weeks ago. This is one of the latest research on brown patch. In summary, still feed it nitrogen to keep healthy growth.

https://youtu.be/31ls42h1WSc


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## Pezking7p (May 23, 2020)

Good shout on the video regarding growth rate vs N fertilization.

I put down DiseaseEx at curative rate.

After all the learning (still minimal) that I did over the weekend, I suspect that I have really (REALLY) babied my lawn in terms of N fertilization. There is a clear demarcation between my grass and my neighbor's grass in terms of greenness and health, so I am starting to suspect that grass health/growth is at the core of the issue, and since this issue isn't spreading to my neighbor's lawn, likely fertilization is at the heart of it as that is the only difference I can see between our practices (they pay someone to take care of their lawn, he has fertilized and likely put down lime as well).

I will await soil test results and come up with a plan to adjust accordingly.

PS, I also sharpened the mower blades yesterday. They are sharp sharp.

Cheers.


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## Pezking7p (May 23, 2020)

Still no soil test results back and my last chance for rain in the next week is today.

Since I made this post I have applied azoxy at the curative rate, and we have had a ton of rain. I also sharpened my blades and mowed. The leaf tips look better but I'm still kind of yellow/brown/thin in a lot of areas.

As I said above, I have probably put down the tiniest amounts of N this year. Just a weed and feed application that I stretched very thin. I'm worried if I don't get started now I will really get into the hot season before I get fertilizer down and need to water more, which I'm not set up well to do over this entire area. Is there anything wrong with throwing down some milorganite tonight (N at 1 lb/k?), and tacking that onto my soil test when it finally comes in? I'm assuming the milorganite should get me most of the way through summer, then I can start to really work on my lawn when it's growing again in the fall.

Yay/Nay?


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