There are many reasons why lawns can lose colour and turn a more awful shade of yellow or brown or straw colour, rather than the green delight we all cherish. These things can happen at any time of the year and finding a cause and a solution can be tricky for most homeowners, even the pros get stuck many times in diagnosing and curing lawn problems.
Listed are a number of reasons and solutions to why lawns can lose colour. This is not an exhaustive list and the reason why any particular individual lawn turns yellow or brown may not be included, as it would be impossible to analyse a particular lawn in a single generic article like this one.
So here are some possible considerations to look into if your own lawn is turning yellow, brown, or straw coloured, as to help track down a possible cause and a solution to bring a lawn back to health.
The lead picture is of a diseased Sir Walter lawn, which is now an entirely golden yellow straw colour.
Poor Lawn Health
A lawn can often not look the best and be browning or off-colour when nothing much is really wrong with it, except perhaps that it may be malnourished. Our lawn soil could be of a poor quality or may be lacking in certain elements which the lawn requires.
A year-round lawn fertilising program is the cure for lawns which are failing to maintain their health and when nothing really else is wrong with them. Applying a high quality lawn fertiliser 4 times per year will greatly help in bringing our lawns up to full health and keeping them there.
Good watering practices are important, to water less often and more deeply, and regular lawn mowing is also important to ensure the lawn is being properly trained and maintained to grow at the optimum heights we want.
the Couch lawn is now repairing from the damage that was caused
an untrained eye might see the brown leaf, moisture, and bare patches and consider the lawn diseased
this lawn went on to repair very quickly
Lawns Turning Brown In Winter
This is a natural occurrence in many different lawn types. Lawns can become yellow or brown over Winter in different regions and in different years, it’s just all part and parcel of owning a lawn that these natural variations do happen.
The best way to help prevent lawns going brown over Winter is to apply a lawn fertiliser 4-6 weeks before the first day of Winter, and then to apply another application of fertiliser to the lawn right in the middle of Winter. These fertilisers should have a high Iron content to help keep lawns green in Winter.
Fertilising lawns for Winter won’t necessarily ensure our lawns won’t go brown over Winter, but they may help. Other factors are at play to determine whether or not our lawns brown off in the cold season, such as lawn type, region, whether conditions prior to and in Winter, frosts, soils, root depth and so on and so on.
Frost, to reiterate, is an important factor in browning lawns in Winter, and this browning can often be removed with a light lawn mowing to remove the tips of the grass which have become most affected and discoloured.
The biggest reward we can have if we fertilise our lawns for Winter as just outlined, is that our lawns will jump back to life and green up again at great speed once Winter is over and Spring has arrived.
Lawn Disease
The onset of lawn disease is one of the biggest reasons why a lawn may be suddenly off-colour. A lawn can turn a yellow type colour, or brown in some areas, though most often we might see a straw coloured appearance across the lawn.
Wilting leaves which appear to be rotting can also be a symptom of lawn disease, and we can get down on our hands and knees to inspect the turf more closely and we might also see brown lesions on the leaf of the lawn, or brown edges at the tips of the leaf where the lawn hasn’t healed properly from lawn mowing.
Lawn disease appears in many different ways, not just in spots or patches, but can cover an entire lawn.
Applying an instant lawn fertiliser (not weed and feed), fungicide treatments if the weather is cool enough, and cutting back shade onto the lawn are all first steps to combatting lawn disease, though it will often be a long haul battle to conquer it.
the lawn could be mistaken as having been scalped during lawn mowing by cutting too short
soon this lawn will be completely consumed and wiped out by disease
turning its trademark golden yellow straw colour and developing bare patches
Sunburnt Lawn
A sunburnt lawn obviously occurs on very hot days, most often when the lawn is being maintained at low lawn mowing heights. Sunburnt lawns will most often occur when the top layer of the lawn soil dries out in Summer and in the same period when the burning occurs.
Lawns which have a very shallow root system are very susceptible to becoming sunburnt on hot days when the top soil dries out and heats up, and the roots of the turf also dry out and heat up at the same time.
The best way to prevent these scenarios occurring is to water lawns more deeply and less often. This will train the lawn to send its roots much deeper into the soil profile, making the lawn more drought tolerant, more heat tolerant in the Summer, and most able to cope with sudden heatwaves, whereby the roots of the lawn are far below evaporation level and so never dry out.
A lawn can also become badly sunburnt, or most more likely it will dry out so much that it can look very brown all over and appear to be near death, and this can occur when a lawn has been left too long in-between lawn mowings, then the lawn is cut at the regular height, and it’s the middle of Summer, and we suddenly have a disaster on our hands.
If we’re dealing with an overgrown lawn in Summer, it is much better to slowly lower lawn mowing heights over several lawn mowings, rather than to send the lawn into shock on a blistering hot day by cutting away almost all its green leaf and to leave the brown thatch layer exposed to the sun.
surrounded by concrete and asphalt and mowed short with a cylinder mower
sunburn and dry patches are all but guaranteed
Lawn Soil Drying Out
This can happen at any time of the year, not just the Summer, in fact it can be in Spring where lawns turning brown due to lack of water can happen most often, when the weather may still be mild but perhaps we haven’t watered the lawn for a very long time and we’ve forgotten just how long ago the lawn actually received a good soaking from rains.
Such lawn soils becoming dry will not always occur when the lawn has a shallow root system, but can also occur when the lawn is very well established, has been watered correctly, and has a deep root system.
At some stage we’ve forgotten to keep up with the water the lawn requires, and the topsoil is now drying out and the lawn is turning brown. A nice deep watering is the cure for ails a lawn in such a condition.
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