What a crazy season we’re seeing across the board. After a sustained drought period followed by sudden rain and heat, we’ve received an unusual volume of calls, emails, and text messages from customers asking the same question: “what is happening to my lawn?!” The number one comment we hear this time of year is, “I think you burnt my grass!” That couldn’t be further from the truth. Lawn complaints across our industry have been showing up everywhere from Maine into Massachusetts. Universities are flooded with calls and tissue samples for diagnosis. Leaf smut is the most visible cause right now.
Leaf Smut Spores Growing on Leaf Tissue (the Dark Patches Most People Are Seeing)
Before we get into what’s happening, please know that proper care and maintenance are essential to all plants, including your lawn. The best disease management is cultural. We’ll come back to that.
Microclimates Make Every Lawn Different
Every lawn and the environment it grows in varies considerably from property to property. Some have full shade and some full sun (shade weakens turf). Some have more organic matter in the soil (which holds water and nutrients better than sandy soil). Some have ledge underneath the topsoil (limits root growth). Some have irrigation systems (correctly set can dramatically help turf and save water; improperly set promotes disease). It goes on and on. Microclimates play a considerable role in the health of your lawn, dictating what grows and what doesn’t. When Mother Nature decides to change things up, those microclimates are affected. Sometimes in harmful ways.
Proper Care and Maintenance
We work hard to educate our customers on proper mowing and watering practices. Some adhere to our recommendations, and some do not. We provide fertility, premium products, expertise, and guidance. The cultural execution (how you mow, how you water, when you do both) is on the homeowner. Teamwork is EVERYTHING! Service calls are still free for those enrolled in one of our programs, so please ask if you don’t understand a recommendation. Read our low-effort lawn care guide for the cultural foundation that prevents most of these problems before they start.
The Widespread Disease Outbreak
Who wants to hear about another widespread problem? We’ve got enough going on. Trust us, we get it. With the sudden change in weather patterns we just experienced, several issues have cropped up. It was an unusually dry late spring. While we were stuck in 50- and 60-degree weather, everyone was waiting for the warmer weather to arrive. Here’s what most folks don’t realize: our cool-season turfgrass loves 55- to 65-degree weather. The lawns were already in a happy place, green and growing nicely.
Then it happened. We had a dramatic spike in temperatures. 80 to 90 degrees, all at once. After the spike, we went into a prolonged drought. Hot days and cool evenings are a recipe for disaster for living plants in our climate. Perfect growing conditions for disease. With the recent rain we desperately needed, we all started to relax, thinking that our lawns would return to their green color and everything would be okay. Right?
WRONG!!! The prolonged drought, coupled with warmer temperatures, has given birth to trillions of disease-spreading spores. In the past few weeks we’ve seen leaf blight, anthracnose, dollar spot, necrotic ring spot, and others cropping up everywhere. Many lawns regressed into dormancy. That’s not a bad thing. It’s Mother Nature’s way of shutting systems down when conditions aren’t favorable. However, in nature, the weak become prey. After the rain over the past few days, landscapes received the water they needed. It was a welcome event. Today the rain continued in the morning and then the sun came out. Many of us went back outside to check on things. What folks discovered: lawns went from bad to worse overnight. Dark brown, almost black patches showed up where there were stressed-out areas the day before.
Drought-Stressed Photos: The Same Areas Where Disease Now Shows Up
Leaf Smut Disease Explodes
Lawns that were either in or entering dormancy were susceptible to infection. Of the diseases listed above, in our travels we’ve seen most of them, sometimes several in the same area. Leaf smut is what’s most visible right now. If your lawn has dry or stressed spots from lack of irrigation, you may have noticed those areas went from light brown to dark brown or even black. The reason is the explosive growth of smut spores on the leaf tissue. Areas that were under extreme stress from the drought may not recover. It’s too early to tell. Yes, there are treatments available. However, we firmly believe (and industry experts agree) that proper cultural practices are most important in preventing and reducing the spread of disease.
What to Do Right Now
Treating disease is best managed on a 14-day cycle. That means multiple treatments and a real expense for you. We’re not managing a golf course or athletic field. Your investment is extremely important to us, and we’d rather give you the honest path forward than sell you treatments that aren’t going to outperform good cultural practices.
The common-sense approach: whatever stress your lawn took, the damage is done. If you don’t have automated irrigation or you don’t water the yard, you cannot expect it to sustain itself under stressful conditions. If you don’t sharpen your mower blades and cut at the recommended heights, treatments won’t move the needle. The best approach going forward is to focus on your lawn and landscape areas as an investment that needs your attention when weather conditions become unfavorable for healthy growth. That means trying to maintain hydration when conditions don’t, especially with windy days and high temperatures.
FOCUS ON KEEPING THE LEAF TISSUE DRY AND THE SOIL MOIST. That means watering thoroughly but infrequently. Do not water for 15 to 30 minutes once a day or multiple times a day. You’re just promoting more disease. Water once or twice per week, when signs of stress are visible. Do it for 1 to 2 hours in each spot. Profound soaking events are crucial. Read our complete Maine lawn watering guide for the full breakdown of how much, when, and how to handle drought.
Every situation is different, and not all customers can water. We fully understand. If you can, do it correctly. Don’t promote more disease by watering a little bit each day.
The Long View
Many lawn diseases are present year-round. Most go unnoticed and pose no real threat. Under extreme conditions like the ones we’ve recently experienced, outbreaks crop up in certain microclimates. Most lawns will recover from this rare smut outbreak. We’re here to help. However, visiting your property to diagnose what we already know is going around doesn’t usually make the most sense. Knowledge is power. Proper care and maintenance is the first step in preventing problems from happening in the first place.
If you’re already on one of our turf management programs, the consistent feeding, soil work, and threshold-based management is exactly the long-term setup that builds resilience against years like this one. If you’re not yet a customer and you’d like that level of attention, give us a call at 207-989-1433 or request a free quote.
Jeremy & the Green Thumb Team