Lawn care fungus

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Hi, neighbors. Jeff Cole, Cole Lawn Care, Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach. How are you all doing? I'm doing an educational video/blog today. I want to help the neighbors out, and this time of year specifically is why I'm making this video/blog. And today's topic is fungus. Rhizoctonia, or easier term is brown patch. This time of year, I've been in the business two and half to three years, and I've noticed the same thing, very specific lawns every year, same exact time. I had to educate myself on this to see what was going on. I knew it was a type of fungus, but I wanted to read more in depth on it so I could help my customers or anybody else out there to eradicate this stuff.

It's actually pretty easy to get rid of. It's an easy, quick treatment. You may have to treat it more than once. I also want to show you the causes, how it spreads, how to take care of it. And this will help from other lawns to bring it into ours if you're, you know, just one of the neighbors in our neighborhood here, and you start taking care of it, it'll keep the spreading down. So it typically happens November through May. And it's because the temperature comes below 80 degrees. Water doesn't evaporate. Moisture stays inside the turf and it creates fungus. So, there isn’t much we can do about it. It affects all warm season turf including St. Augustine, which, it spreads even faster in St. Augustine. Causes are watering at night. This means that the water can't be evaporated.

You want to water very early in the morning, and throughout the day the water evaporates, the excess water evaporates, and you aren't left with soggy turf to turn into a fungus playground. Too much fertilizer. This fungus feeds off of nitrogen, which is included in a lot of the fertilizers around. So when it comes to spring time, you don't want to fertilize if you have fungus in your yard, or else you'll make it spread. You'll end up killing your grass instead of making it grow super fast. And then erratic variances in temperatures and humidity, which, we're in Florida, so we can't stop that from happening. The only thing we can do is treat it and know what to treat and what to look for. It spreads through anything, people, pets, walking through the yard. When it rains, the water will wash the spores and make it spread even faster. And mowing, mowing can spread it. I'm not sure if it would go from yard to yard, seeing how we mow and we run our equipment so hard. But it'll, it just gets on you and goes to the next bit of grass. And it does spread fast.
The way you can identify fungus, and a lot of people will think that it's chinch bugs, so they they treat the grass for pests or they use a pesticide to treat it for chinch bugs, and they see that it's still spreading, so they don't know what's going on. And they might get upset. And you gotta know what you're treating. So here's a picture. I'm going to try to post it here in the video. This is my first one. But if I can, I'll put links and pictures on the website so you can see exactly what it looks like. But you'll start noticing a yellow spot or a brown patch with a yellow, copper ring around it. I'm sure a lot of you have seen that. And then it just spreads, and then you'll start noticing another spot, and it spreads. It goes in a circle or it can be erratic. And it typically has black in the roots.

The good thing about this fungus is it doesn't affect roots. So as soon as you treat it and you get it done, your grass should start growing back. The only bad part about that is you have a patch. So any weed seeds that get into that patch of grass, the sun can reach it and then the weeds can start spreading and get out of control. So now you have to fight weeds on top of just fighting fungus. So that's why you want to catch it fast. And, again, don't fertilize if you have fungus. You will make it spread even faster.

There are some options, fungicide for, on Amazon there's BioAdvanced. I'll have a link the description. There's Scotts DiseaseEx Lawn Fungicide. That'll work, too. There's a lot more, Walmart, Lowe's, Home Depot. You can get, just get a fungicide for your yard. Spray it, spread it, whatever kind of fungicide it is. You just want to take care of it ASAP. And they'll be links and pictures, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate. Comment below. I'll be sure to answer anything as soon as I can. I am quite busy here, so I'll get to this, back to the videos and comments as soon as possible. But any questions, concerns, comment. E-mail [email protected]. Phone number's 321-323-9098, and that'll be on the website as well, so you can look back, and googling anything about fungus and the grass, that helps as well. So I just want to help you neighbors out. You have a great day. Hope you learned something today. I know I did, and that's what matters. Have a great day.

BIOAdvanced Fungus Control

Scotts Disease EX