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ayrehead_gw

Fungus disease

ayrehead
9 years ago

I'm dealing with a fungus disease on the lawn, Take-All Root Rot. I mostly know what to do, except for one thing. Down in the soil under the bare patch left by the disease, there are many tiny nodes of fungus. They are fuzzy with tiny filaments, white, scattered throughout the soil down to 5 inches. I don't know if these are the same fungus that affected the grass, or some other fungus.

Is that stuff harmful? What should I do? Dig up all the dirt and haul it away? Treat the soil with chemical? Just leave it alone?

Comments (2)

  • dchall_san_antonio
    9 years ago

    What kind of grass?
    What were you planning to do?
    What is your watering regimen (duration and frequency)?

    The short answer is that your soil is biologically unbalanced already. Adding more chemicals will throw that balance further off.

    All you have to do is make the soil normal again and it will be fine. Generally the fastest way to make it normal is to stop using 1) fungicides, 2) insecticides, 3) herbicides, and reintroduce the beneficial fungi that make your soil "normal" again. You do that with compost and organic fertilizer. Compost brings in the beneficial microbes to overpower and control the disease pathogens. Organic fertilizer feeds the beneficial microbes so they can continue to provide that normal balance of predominantly beneficial microbes. That is what normal, healthy soil is.

    Since you already know you have a fungal disease, what I have done for the past 12 years is apply ordinary corn meal at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet over the entire yard. Why over the entire yard? Two reasons: one is that you can't know where all the pathogenic fungi are, and the second is that corn meal is an organic fertilizer and will leave dark green spots everywhere you apply it. If you only put it in spots, you'll have yellowish grass everywhere except where the disease was. Corn meal works biologically. As it decomposes, it attracts a predatory fungus called trichoderma (try koh DER mah). Trichoderma feeds on the pathogenic disease fungi and eradicates it in about a week. Then it takes another 2 weeks for the grass to start to come back in normally.

    And no, the disease stuff isn't harmful unless you are a plant. Chances are you are not watering properly. If you can answer the questions above we can help you more.

  • ayrehead
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    To answer your questions:
    What kind of grass?
    There is no grass at all in the patch I'm talking about. I should have explained what I meant by "bare patch." The disease totally killed all grass in that patch. It's bare dirt. The healthy parts of the lawn are doing fine with a mix of Bermuda and st Augustine.
    What is your watering regimen (duration and frequency)?
    Once a week 25 minutes with below ground sprinklers.

    I didn't want to open up a wide ranging discussion about how to deal with fungus disease. There are many many sources already available telling how, and I've read quite a few. Please, I just wanted an opinion about the white nodes of fungus underground. Thanks.