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Things are warming up in Southern Alabama. Your zoysia, centipede and St Augustine lawns are coming out of dormancy.
Instead of healthy green grass, you’re finding your lawn has large brown patches.
What is going on?
You probably have large patch. It started in the fall with small brown spots that you probably didn’t notice.
And over the winter, the problem got worse.
What can you do?
You have two solutions. Learn how to take care of your yard, so you don’t get brown patch again next fall. And you can hire a lawn care company to correctly apply the right type of nitrogen at the right time and the right amount.
What is Large Patch?
Large patch is a fungal disease. Centipede and St Augustine grass are the most susceptible.
Large patch develops when there are poor lawn management practices, coupled with too much fertilizer applied in the fall.
Large patch thrives in cool temperatures. It’ll start to kill grass blades in the winter and will continue through early spring.
Since Mobile, AL temperatures still dip into 50°F or below at night, large patch will live on your lawn until temperatures consistently get above 50°F.
How are your New Year resolutions? Here’s a resolution we recommend.
How Good Lawn Management Practices Keep Large Patch Off Your Lawn
You can control large patch when you, as the homeowner, practice smart lawn management practices.
Large patch, like all fungal diseases, loves moisture and nitrogen. Your goal is to reduce both water and nitrogen until large patch is eradicated from your yard.
Here are seven lawn care tips to employ this spring:
- Improve poor drainage: If your property has water pooling, you’ll need to correct your drainage problem. Dry creek beds, berms and swales will help relieve ponding in your yard.
- In the spring, use smart irrigation practices: If you only sprinkle your lawn every day, you’re increasing your risk of large patch and other fungal diseases. Instead, use smart irrigation practices by giving your yard a good soak once a week.Your lawn only needs 1”-2” of water. So, if your property gets an inch of rain from a passing storm, you’ll need to give your lawn only an additional inch.
- Properly mow your lawn: You should only mow your yard after the grass dries off in the morning. Also, just take off the top third of the blades when you mow. During the hot, dry months of summer, you can set your mower to its highest setting because your lawn has slowed down.
- Bag up all of your grass clippings: Large patch will spread. So you need to bag up all of your clippings to ensure that the disease doesn’t spread to the rest of your lawn.
- Don’t core aerate your lawn: Your lawn care technician won’t core aerate your lawn in early spring when large patch is present.
- Do get your lawn dethatched: Since brown patch lives in thatch, it’s a good idea to get your lawn dethatched to get rid of the disease.
- Hold off fertilizing your lawn if you have large patch: As you know, nitrogen feeds large patch as well as other fungal diseases. So you’ll ruin your yard if you use the wrong type of yard fertilizer or if you use too much of it.
You can read more basic lawn care tips in this blog.
Let Your Local Lawn Company Take Care of Fertilize Your AL Lawn
Your local lawn service can help you with early spring fertilization. Your trained technician is an expert in lawn diseases as well as the appropriate fertilizer for your lawn’s unique needs.
We’re experts on large patch and how to get rid of it. If you think you have large patch on your Alabama lawn or you want to prevent it, call us today at 251-648-9947 or fill out our contact form.
Xtreme Turf Lawn Care serves the following cities in Baldwin and Montgomery Counties, AL: Daphne, Fairhope, Foley, Gulf Shores, Loxley, Mobile, Saraland and Spanish Fort.
