9 Common Diseases & Insects Affecting NY & NJ Lawns This Summer
The weather affects your lawn during the summer—especially during mid- to late summer.
When you don’t get much rain in Rockland or Bergen Counties, and you get a lot of dry, hot days, then your grass is in danger of disease and insects.
Five Common Lawn Diseases
Your Rockland County lawn has cool season grasses gracing your property. Cool season means that these grasses, such as Kentucky bluegrass, fescues and rye can survive our winters and grow faster in cooler temperatures.
It also means that certain cultivars can hold up better than other grass types. Kentucky bluegrass, for example, does better in the sunshine than fescue which grows in semi- to all shade.
If your yard grass is under heat stress—too many days of hot sunshine and hardly any rain—it’s more susceptible for diseases and insects.
Likewise, a week or two of cloudy and humid days with many downpours encourage disease growth as well.
Here are five common lawn diseases that affect Rockland County, NY and Bergen County, NJ:
- Brown patch: You can find brown patch on any lawn because it’s a prevalent fungal lawn disease affecting NY and NJ properties during the summer.
Your lawn may have brown circles throughout it. In the morning, it may look like there are thick cobwebs or laundry lint in the middle of these brown spots. These cobwebs are mycelium.
You may notice dead grass underneath the mycelium. If you cut back on watering your lawn and use less nitrogen fertilizer, the disease should clear up on its own.
- Dollar spot: If your lawn is infected with dollar spot, you’ll notice straw-colored patches that are the size of a silver dollar. Dollar spot shows up in lawns during hot, dry summers.
- Fairy ring: This disease shows up in the spring or fall. You’ll notice a circular outline of toadstools or puffs in your yard. This fungus develops when there is a surge in fertilizer and your grass grows quickly. Get rid of the toadstools or puffs because they’re poisonous.
Read how a smart lawn sprinkler can help you save money as well as have a beautiful, green lawn.
- Red thread: Red thread disease can kill your NY lawn. This disease develops during the fall. The disease starts with a wet-soaked appearance. Then after your lawn dries, you’ll notice red or rust-colored bunches of threads on your lawn.
This disease is contagious, and it can kill all of your turf. You can stop the spread by wiping off your mower blades, not walking through the diseased grass then onto healthy grass, and by calling your local lawn care company to take care of the disease.
- Rust: This disease shows up during the summer, and all turfgrasses are at risk. It’s an environmental disease because it develops during a string of hot, dry days or a period of humid and rainy weather.
Your yard grass develops spores that are orange and turn into yellow, red or brown. If it’s not treated, rust will kill grass plants leaving you with a thin lawn where weeds can take over easily.
Some of these diseases can be reversed when you cut down on fertilization and watering as well as raising your mower blades higher.
In other cases, you’ll need a lawn care company to diagnose the disease and apply the right fungicide to get rid of it.
4 Common Lawn Pests that Invade Hudson Valley Properties
When it comes to summer lawn maintenance, it seems that you’re plagued with lawn diseases and insects.
These four common lawn pests can ruin your yard:
- Cutworms do surface damage. The caterpillars are gray to brown-black and form a C when disturbed.
- Sod webworms do surface damage. The young caterpillars have black heads and the adults are brown to green in color.
Read how teaming up with Majestic Lawn Care and Landscape can keep weeds out of your NY lawn.
- Chinch bugs do surface damage. Their black bodies have white wings and they’re about a quarter inch long.
- Grubs do damage underground: European chafers, Japanese beetles and oriental beetles make up the three grubs you need to contend with in the late spring and again in late summer. They lay in a C shape when you pull your grass back. Grubs feast on grass roots and can make your lawn look unsightly.
Your professional lawn service can apply grub preventatives to stop these pests in their tracks. They also can apply controls above ground to keep the cutworms, sod webworms and chinch bugs from destroying your yard.
How Majestic Lawn Care and Landscape Can Help You Get Rid of Disease and Insects in Your Lawn
At Majestic Lawn Care and Landscape, we have organic and conventional solutions to help your lawn recover from diseases and insects.
For grubs, we apply a preventer in late spring to kill the first batch of grubs, and we apply another round of grub prevention in late summer after mature beetles lay their eggs in the soil.
If you think your lawn has succumbed to a fungal disease or you think you have insects eating your lawn, call us today at (845) 708-2988 for Rockland County residents and (201) 788-7191 for Bergen County residents.
You can also fill out our contact form.
Since 1993, Majestic Lawn Care and Landscape has been serving Rockland County, NY and Bergen County, NJ. proudly.
Sources:
Cornell University Extension, Various Articles.
Rossi, Frank, “Lawn Care without Pesticides.”
Penn State University, Various Articles.