svcrawf72 – posted 16 March 2004 15:25
I watered the crap out of my new sod and the sod that was laid around the house also got it and I noticed it is getting that yellow to it, “fugui” I would guess. I also noticed streaks in the lawn or stripes. What is that? I would like to use cornmeal for the fungi if that is it but I just put down starter fertilizer 2 days ago, will it hurt? Should I hold off? Will it go away if I dry up the yard and only water when needed now? Did I ask what is up with the stripes? Man, never new a yard was this crazy!
jr – posted 16 March 2004 16:41
Starter fertilizer is for starting seed, because it’s just starting. It is not for sod, which is mature grass. Sod is already full of fertilizer from the sod farm when you get it anyway. Too much fertlizer causes certain types of fungal diseases. Forget the cornmeal nonsense. Freshly laid sod is especially vulnerable to disease and if you screw around with cornmeal your new sod will be dead by the time it starts to work.
frenchman – posted 16 March 2004 17:41
To much organic causes fungus. The cornmeal guy in my opinion needs to lay off on advising everyone to use cornmeal. If you use cornmeal everytime for fungus the fungus will be resistant to it. You need to alternate from one chemical to another.
BG – posted 16 March 2004 19:27
Too much watering can cause all kinds of weird things. Make sure that the plant is getting good level’s of potassium also. That’s going to help you build a healthy root system and ward off diseases in the long run.
svcrawf72 – posted 17 March 2004 07:37
I just have to say this.
I was outside last night on my porch watching the grass grow and I thought to myself, for a grass “St Augustine” that is native to the the coast line areas in “certain parts” it sure is picky on how much water it needs and will deal with. WHat about the rainy season? Here in florida it has been known to rain every day in the summer for a month at a time. “Afternoon showers” or whatever. SO I would guess fungi is common and even if you do nothing one day it will go away if you cut back on the water?
Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 17 March 2004 23:48
Yellow streaks on new sod are not a sign of fungus. I can’t imagine why streaks would appear on new sod. Yellow streaks are usually caused by uneven application of some material that causes greening. But in the case of sod, if the sod had been improperly fertilized before cutting at the sod farm, it would be impossible to realign the sod in exactly the same pattern it was cut out from, so the yellowing would not look like streaks.
For those of you who do not want to try corn meal but continue to bad mouth it, I don’t see any need to get adversarial about it. What is the point of that. We are not here to debate. You can present your chemical based solutions and I’ll suggest organic solutions. Readers are free to decide for themselves. I’m not telling anyone to stop using chemical fungicides because they don’t work or whatever. I’m describing an alternative to chemicals for those who are interested. I’m not candy coating anything either. It pretty much works like I describe it and in the time frame I describe.
The disease fungi are not likely to develop a resistance to the Trichoderma fungus. Trichoderma eats the disease fungus. Developing a resistance to Trichoderma would be like cattle developing a resistance to humans.
The statement that “too much organic causes fungus” is about 50% accurate; however. In fact many of us are spending inordinate amounts of time and money to develop more and better fungi in our composts to be applied to crops and pastures. For those of you who want to buy it in a bag, you can already buy some special strains of fungus to combat lawn and garden problems. The prices are about the same as for chemical fungicides. I just can’t see spending that much for a fungicide when something much cheaper works just as well.
svcrawf72 – posted 18 March 2004 06:46
San, I will try it.
Thanks and don’t worry about it.