Spring Dead Spot

We are seeing a lot more spring dead spot this year than we normally do.  No one is exactly sure why, but I want to help you differentiate between spring dead spot and other forms of lawn damage which are prevalent this year as well.

Bad Weather

To help you have a better understanding of why lawns started out so poorly this year, you have to go back to November of 2019. The only really cold weather we had was as the grass was going dormant temperatures fell to single digits for about three nights in a row. Subsequently, if you have some “dead” looking crepe myrtles or other trees, this is the most likely culprit. That hard freeze took a heavy toll on trees and did do some damage to our lawns as well. If it would’ve stopped there most lawns would have been okay, but it didn’t.

Our spring was another record book season for rainfall. Keeping the ground saturate from December through early April. Then we just couldn’t get the temperatures to come up enough to get the grass to really flourish. If that weren’t enough, we got two late frosts that “put the nail in the coffin” for some entire lawns and patches in others.

By now, most of you have seen your lawns recover except for maybe a patch or two. If those patches of dead areas are circular in shape, you may have spring dead spot. Spring dead spot is not the easiest disease to identify. Especially in years like this where we had so many other environmental factors affecting the grass.

What You Can Do?

Your lawn will recover by the end of the summer. Meaning the dead spots will fill in with new grass. To help speed this process up, keep your grass cut low and have it aerated. To learn more about aeration CLICK HERE. It’s important to note though, that if you had spring dead spot this year, it will come back again next year. The best advice I can give you is to take a picture of the dead areas so that we can refer back to it next year. If these dead spots reappear in the same place, it’s spring dead spot.

Why is it in My Lawn and Not My Neighbor’s?

To put it simply, the pathogen(s) (Leptosphaeria, Gaeumannomyces, Ophiosphaerella) are present in your lawn and not your neighbor’s. I know that’s not the answer you want to hear, but that’s simply the truth. We can do fungicide treatments for you which help to control spring dead spot, but they are only about 80-90% effective and they are quite costly. We would make those applications during round 6 and 7 which will increase the cost of each application by 2.5. So if a regular lawn treatment is $100, each of those two treatments will cost $250, AND you may still have a few dead spots.

I realize that this is not welcome news, and I completely understand. If you want to learn more about spring dead spot click the link below. Also, if you are interested in having us help you with a lawn aeration or fungicide treatment, we will be glad to help.

http://extension.msstate.edu/newsletters/turf-tips-newsletter/2012/spring-dead-spot-evident-bermudagrass-lawns-4-9-12