Dollar Spot is another unsightly lawn disease which is most noticeable in lawns throughout the growing months from Spring to Summer to Autumn. This lawn disease appears as small brown or golden spots of discoloured turf, usually about the size of a 50 cent coin, sometimes larger or smaller. These lesions will appear often in patches and these patches will continue to spread further across the lawn surface.
Dollar Spot will spread across a lawn via its Mycellium threads, which cobweb-like threads can often be seen in early morning before dew has evaporated from the lawn. This disease can be spread by close contact of people, pets, and lawn mowers; even wind can carry infected particles of lawn onto neighbours lawns to also infect their lawns too. In other words, just walking across one infected lawn, and then walking onto a clean lawn, may infect that clean lawn with Dollar Spot also.
Dollar Spot is most prevalent on low cut lawns, which is often why it is most often encountered on lawns such as golf courses, and home lawns which may be cut very low with cylinder mowers such as Couch or Zoysia. With this in mind and if our lawn is infected with Dollar Spot lawn disease, one cultural management practice we can utilise to combat this lawn disease is to begin to mow our lawns higher.
The disease does only affects the leaf of the lawn and not the crowns, so the lawn will not die off from having Dollar Spot disease.
Dollar Spot Pathogen
The pathogen previously named Sclerotinia homeocarpa has since been updated only recently to a new genus - Clarireedia, with four new species assigned to this genus, with only Clarireedia jacksonii and Clarireedia monteithiana being known outside the UK, both of which can infect cool season and warm season grasses.
Management and Treatment Of Dollar Spot
Control of Dollar Spot lawn disease should be considered as a complete rethink of how we take care of our lawns, and adjustments made as necessary. Dollar Spot requires high humidity to thrive and so what this means in the warmer climates of Australia is that we need to adjust our lawn watering habits first and foremost. We may be applying too much water, or watering too frequently, or watering at the wrong time of day, or all three.
Watering in the mornings is always best practice so as not to have a wet lawn sitting overnight on a hot Summer’s night, which of course is a prime breeding ground for lawn disease. We may also need to water less frequently and even to use less water. Such practices and courses of action would need to be determined by the homeowner themselves, to adjust their watering practices as is suitable for however they are watering their own lawns at present.
The number one rule for lawn watering remains the same, to water more deeply and less often.
Raising lawn mowing heights, as already mentioned, is another form of defence against Dollar Spot.
Dollar Spot also prefers soils with low Nitrogen levels, with this in mind we can see that fertilising our lawns regularly with a high quality lawn fertiliser will help in combatting Dollar Spot in two ways. Firstly, with any type of lawn problem at all, our very first line of treatment is always to feed and strengthen the turf itself so it can maximise its potential to become healthier so as to repair and to fight off any problem which may be occurring in our lawns, which in this case is Dollar Spot. Secondly, by increasing Nitrogen levels in the soil we are also creating an environment which is less hospitable for the Dollar Spot lawn disease.
Fungicides for control of Dollar Spot are also available, and in most cases should also be utilised to cure this disease from our lawns. Though a fungicide is not a cure on its own and is most often not entirely successful from a single treatment application, as these treatments can be hit and miss most of the time when used on their own.
Instead, multiple treatments of fungicide application should be considered before treatment even begins. Prepare for this and plan it out in advance. Manufacturers of fungicides suitable for treatment of Dollar Spot will advise as to appropriate re-application rates for the product, and these guidelines should be followed.
Lawn coring to aerate the lawn soil may also aid greatly in combatting Dollar Spot disease on yet another front.
Dollar Spot does not have a single click, once only solution, instead the disease needs to be fully managed from multiple fronts at once, and these treatments should be continued until the disease is cured.
This includes, fungicide treatments, and adjusting watering, adjusting lawn mowing heights, and applying a high quality lawn fertiliser as part of an ongoing scheduled lawn care program, as well as possibly coring the lawn to aerate its soil.
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