A young lawn, full of promise, with years of lush green grass in its future—it all could be taken away with a perennial disease known as stripe smut. Find out what that is, exactly, and how to prevent it from happening to your impressionable grass.

What is Stripe Smut

The symptoms aren’t hard to spot:

• Short grass blades
• Thin yellow stripes along the veins
• Blades turn into thin, dark, curling strips

Stripe Smut is a lawn disease caused by a fungus, and it’s more common in new grass seedlings—especially cool-season turfgrasses like bentgrass and Kentucky bluegrass. It thrives in cool, damp climates, and so it prefers the spring and fall months. However, it can lie dormant and survive colder seasons on grass blades or as spores in the soil, making it more susceptible to spreading.

A hot dry or damp summer can also be detrimental to a lawn if it’s already weakened by disease. This is why it’s best to treat it as soon as you see it or prevent disease altogether.

Preventing Lawn Disease

There are certain practices that can help reduce the likelihood of lawn diseases:

• Avoid treating the lawn with nitrogen-based fertilizer in the summer.
• Aerate to loosen soil and break up thatch for better drainage and less soil dampness.
• Plant grass that’s resistant to disease like stripe smut.
• Reseed the lawn with fungicide-treated seeds.
• Apply fungicides in late fall before the disease goes dormant for the winter.

Contact Cardinal Lawns today for more information on lawn disease treatment and prevention, and help build a brighter future for your yard.