Brown Patch!

This picture gives you an idea of the circular appearance of Brown Patch.

It has been hot and humid, and yesterday I got the call: We had brown patch in our lawn. It is amazing how quickly it spreads. Two days ago, the lawn was looking great. Yesterday, there were streaks of brown in many areas of the lawn. As I was preparing to take pictures of the disease, I stuck my hand down in the grass. It is unbelievable how "muggy" it was next to the soil.

Brown patch can be identified by the lesions on the leaves. These lesions rule out grub damage and drought as causes of the damage. The clinical description of brown patch says the disease may appear in circular patches, sometimes with green grass in the center. I kind of saw this--mostly it just looked like brown stripes from a distance.

The easiest way to tell if it is a disease, is to look for lesions like the one pictured above. Leaf blades may have more than one lesion.

Brown Patch can be treated with a fungicide. If you decide not to treat, the grass may grow out of the disease. Doing so has some risk, however, as if the disease gets bad enough, it can kill parts of your lawn. If you seeding in the last year, I recommend treating, as young Fescue lawns can be devastated by disease.

Have you seen brown spots in your lawn? Are they from disease?