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Why Does My Lawn Have a Disease and My Neighbor's Lawn Doesn't?
Why Does My Lawn Have a Disease and My Neighbor's Lawn Doesn't?
I have heard this question many times since I have been in the lawn care industry. A customer's lawn develops a disease and their neighbor's lawn looks fine. Both lawns were put in the same time, have received the same basic care, but the neighbor does not have a lawn care service. Is the disease the result of the applications that were applied to the lawn?
In answering this question, the first thing to understand is how a disease develops. You have probably heard of the fire triangle. In order for a fire to develop, you need three basic components – fuel, heat and oxygen. If one of the three is removed, the fire is extinguished. When we discuss disease development, we call it the Disease Triangle. The three components are environment, host and pathogen.
When we say environment, we include weather conditions and temperature, but we also include any aspect that can affect the growing conditions of the plant, including plant selection and placement, mowing, watering and lawn fertilization. The pathogen is the disease causing agent, such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. Most every disease-causing agent may be present in the home lawn environment. They are part of nature and can survive for many years. The host plant is the tree, shrub or grass growing in the home landscape. In order for a lawn disease to develop, the environment has to exist for a long enough time for the pathogen to develop and infect the host plant.
Getting back to the original question, the reason why the disease developed in the lawn was that the right environment existed for a long enough time for the pathogen to develop and infect the host plant. Even though the lawn next to your lawn does not have a disease, it has the potential to develop it at some future time when conditions are right.
Treating lawn disease such as brown patch disease, red thread disease and spring dead spot disease usually requires improving the growing conditions of the lawn. This may mean changing watering habits, increasing mowing height, adjusting fertilization requirements, adding a soil amendment, core aerating to improve root development and/or overseeding to introduce disease resistant varieties of grass into the lawn.
There are disease control materials available to treat most lawn diseases, but the control is usually temporary and the disease often comes back. That is why Spring-Green often recommends improving the growing conditions as the best approach. In some locations, due to intense environmental stresses, a disease control material may be the best choice.