What's Going on With My Lawn?

Kentucky bluegrass, Fescue, Rye and Bent, etc
Post Reply
User avatar
Smolenski7
Posts: 1105
Joined: July 8th, 2010, 8:56 pm
Location: Central CT
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Some Experience

What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by Smolenski7 » November 9th, 2020, 5:59 pm

I went to work on my lawn last Friday and noticed a lot of yellow spotting seemingly over night. It has gotten a bit worse over the last few days, but not much. I've never noticed anything like this before; it's weird. My lawn looks like it has the grass equivalent to the measles. And, so do my neighbors on either side of me and even one behind me.

To be specific, the yellow spots are only occurring in sunny areas, nothing in shaded spaces whether the shade is under a tree or by my house. The grass mix is nothing special. It's a blend of whatever the contractor put down 25 years ago and whatever seed I find that matches the original color best. There is one small area though, that gets full sun, that I planted with a mix of seed from the SuperSeedStore that has no yellow spots at all. That mix seems to be immune.

As for care, my neighbor has a service, so it's cut regularly but not mulched. He lets the grass fly. It's fertilized on a different schedule than mine too. I use most organic, however, during the early fall I do put down urea. This year I also put down Barricade for the poa. The weather last week was rainy and fairly cold at night, but for the past 5 days it's been in the 70's.....in Connecticut.....in November!

So, what's going on with my lawn and the neighbors'?
Image


Image

User avatar
MorpheusPA
Posts: 18129
Joined: March 5th, 2009, 7:32 pm
Location: Zone 6 (Eastern PA)
Grass Type: Elite KBG
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Advanced

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by MorpheusPA » November 9th, 2020, 9:14 pm

I think we're going to need some closeups of the yellow areas because the wide-screen edition above doesn't really show anything wrong. If anything, they both look pretty healthy to my eye. Perhaps it's dropping into dormancy due to the initial cold weather kick and lowered sunlight (warm weather right now regardless)?

But offhand, I don't detect anything wrong just from what I'm seeing.

User avatar
Smolenski7
Posts: 1105
Joined: July 8th, 2010, 8:56 pm
Location: Central CT
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Some Experience

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by Smolenski7 » November 10th, 2020, 9:11 am

Morph., thanks for tge reply. I think you might be right, however, I have never seen my lawn transition like this before. It is 2020, so why not? Here are a few close ups.
Image

Image

BIGDADDY13
Posts: 44
Joined: May 28th, 2020, 2:06 pm
Location: Northeastern CT
Grass Type: KBG and Fescue
Lawn Size: 1 acre-2 acre
Level: Some Experience

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by BIGDADDY13 » November 10th, 2020, 10:45 am

I noticed the same thing on my neighbors lawn. At first thought it might have been spot treatments for weeds, but almost looks like fertilizer burn on his. Yours definitely looks like a different issue. the texture of the weed/grass in that pic suggests to me that whatever is there is dying off a bit. My guess is some weed, but tough to tell from the pic

User avatar
MorpheusPA
Posts: 18129
Joined: March 5th, 2009, 7:32 pm
Location: Zone 6 (Eastern PA)
Grass Type: Elite KBG
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Advanced

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by MorpheusPA » November 10th, 2020, 11:35 am

That's much more edifying and definitely not dormancy; it looks more like a fungal infection, although I'll be durned if I can tell you what it is. Let's see if somebody else can give you a positive ID because it looks like you caught that super-early.


mvftw
Posts: 34
Joined: May 15th, 2020, 12:00 pm
Location: Long Island
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 1000-3000
Level: Some Experience

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by mvftw » November 10th, 2020, 4:16 pm

Neighbors lawn is turning also, but I'm sure it's dormancy like Morph said. His lawn turns early every fall and comes back nice late spring...

User avatar
Smolenski7
Posts: 1105
Joined: July 8th, 2010, 8:56 pm
Location: Central CT
Grass Type: Northern Mix
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Some Experience

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by Smolenski7 » November 11th, 2020, 8:13 am

Take a look how there is nothing under the tree. It seems to be contained to sunny areas. Is dormancy normally like this, I don't recall?
Image

User avatar
__JT__
Posts: 170
Joined: May 10th, 2016, 9:25 pm
Location: SE Mass. zone 6A
Grass Type: Northern Mix (20% each of Midnight, Diva, and Everglade Kentucky bluegrass, and 20% Zodiac chewings fescue and 20% Fiesta 4 perennial ryegrass) with Bewitched mixed into shade
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Experienced

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by __JT__ » November 11th, 2020, 9:23 am

My lawn has that too. It showed up a week ago. It's weird, I've never seen it before. Mine is a northern mix from SSS. I noticed it on a neighbor's yard as well. Hard to tell on other yards. It stands out more on higher maintained lawns.

I'm not sure what it is?. The pattern does match fallen leave scatter. I thought it might be some snow mold blight? It was unusual to have 2-3 inches of snow a few weeks back, when the grass is still succulent. I didn't see any webbing, but it might be that conditions were that it came and went, and now the damage damage is visible...

My grass is still active (mowing every 4-5 days) so hopefully it will grow out somewhat...We just had a stretch of dry weather, might help to remedy it...

uncle_al
Posts: 246
Joined: June 21st, 2009, 6:07 am
Location: Raynham, MA zone 6
Grass Type: northern mix
Lawn Size: Not Specified
Level: Not Specified

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by uncle_al » November 23rd, 2020, 5:02 pm

I had it too... called the Local John Deere Lesco (or whatever its called now) they got dozens of calls about it as well. They called University of Rhode Island and was told it was due to the rapid cooling and freezing of the turf. Made worse by walking on it.
It will grow out.

SalemChiro
Posts: 31
Joined: September 26th, 2018, 4:16 pm
Location: Boston, North Shore
Grass Type: TTTF/KBG
Lawn Size: 5000-10000
Level: Experienced

Re: What's Going on With My Lawn?

Post by SalemChiro » November 23rd, 2020, 6:45 pm

It's called Chilling Injury.

You can read about it here.
https://ag.umass.edu/sites/ag.umass.edu ... r_2020.pdf

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 18 guests