Hello World! Welcome Friends! Brown patches have no place in a green, healthy lawn. While water gives life, an overabundance of it can lead to those discolored, dead-looking spots in your grass. Moderation is key, after all.
Let’s break down the concepts involving the brown patches, working our way to overwatering and coming up with viable solutions that can prevent the occurrence of this notorious, albeit manageable, lawn issue.
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash
What is this brown patch?
Is it a disease that poses a threat to your lawn’s health? Property owners or managers are reminded reasonably enough: water your grass at least an inch a week for it to grow healthy and green. The level of hydration and frequency do need an uptick when it’s hotter outside.
Because water evaporates quickly with heat, early mornings represent the best time for watering the lawn. Sprinkler systems add precision to the water distribution and ensure everything operates like clockwork. They accomplish the work with little to no human intervention.
Here comes brown patch, a fungal disease that invades grass during months with high temperature and humidity. The affected grass blades look wilted, frayed, and dry, and the patch can spread in your lawn.
The brown patch disease typically affects cool-season grass varieties, such as perennial ryegrass and tall fescue. There are also grass species that go to sleep on cold months and become brown as well.
What paves the way for brown patches?
Overwatering is known as one of the main reasons behind these blighted areas on your lawn.
Rhizoctonia fungus, which is behind this lawn malady, may have been present in your soil but only made itself visibly known when the conditions were right. As noted earlier, hot and humid conditions reinforce this fungal disease, so do rain and moisture from over-irrigation.
Too much water saturates the soil. With water saturation, poor aeration follows as per the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Plants need oxygen for aerobic respiration to produce carbon dioxide and make food during photosynthesis.
The oxygen supply or the lack of it hampers the survival of your grass, thus its color and appearance.
Has the problem to do with the sprinkler system then?
The sprinkler system is not the culprit here. Issues such as overwatering have more to do with the management of the irrigation and interplay of weather conditions outside of anyone’s sphere of influence.
If anything, the presence of brown patches tells you to pay a closer look at the current configuration of your sprinkler system and how it can be further improved.
How to prevent overwatering as far as your sprinkler is concerned?
Sprinklers built for homes like hunter irrigation systems have controllers where you set the watering time, frequency, and duration for your grass, fruit trees, and other plants. As each type of plant has varying water needs, you can devise a program for each one of them.
Take advantage of this controller to regulate the amount of water that gets distributed into your lawn and garden. Check and test your sprinkler heads if they are doing their job in their designated areas. Spot leaks and irrigation parts that may have to be replaced. It is recommended that you inspect your sprinkler system at least once a year.
Add Sensors
Even when you automate the irrigation per se, the standard setup doesn’t account for contingencies such as rain or precipitation. You can imagine the amount of water your lawn may have collected from the sprinkler and the sky on rainy days. This situation leads to overwatering.
You can manually shut the water off through the valves when it rains, but for a more fool-proof, doable solution, consider installing a rain sensor. This device senses rain and automatically shuts down the system at the first drop.
A rain sensor makes things more efficient from your end, saving you water and money, and for your lawn, it lessens the occurrence of too much watering. Some sensors combine rain and freeze, all for keeping excess water at bay.
There’s another sensor that monitors the level of moisture—it has a trigger mechanism that turns off the water supply if the desired level of moisture at the root zone has been reached.
Will the brown patch go away?
Yes, it’s not the end for your grass. While the brown patch disease makes your lawn unsightly for the time being, it doesn’t lead to permanent loss of turf as per this publication. Take extra caution though if you’ve recently planted your grass.
Modified watering practices and meaningful tweaks to your irrigation system, as noted above, can mitigate this stressful time for your lawn. Another form of intervention is effectively mowing the grass to a certain height. You may have to slow down on lawn fertilizer as too much nitrogen causes or aggravates the disease.
Did you enjoy these tips? Stay tuned for more freshly cut ideas about proper lawn care and maintenance.
Click the links below for any posts you may have missed!
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