In Iowa, we tend to see leaf spot lawn disease in late spring or early summer in our turf. Leaf spot disease often presents similarly to symptoms of drought, with brown or black spots covering the grass blades of your lawn. If your lawn is struggling with leaf spot instead of drought, watering your lawn could exacerbate the issue. Instead, contact a professional to assess your lawn before you accidentally make conditions worse! Lawn care professionals will be able to administer curative treatments and curate a plan to bring your lawn back to full health.

How can you identify leaf spot disease in a lawn?

Leaf spot lawn disease spotted in lawn in Urbandale, IA.

Properly identifying leaf spot disease can be tricky – not because the damage is difficult to notice, but because it looks similar to other lawn issues you may encounter. Leaf spot presents itself with brown or black spots covering the grass blades of your lawn, very similar to the presentation you may see from an underwatered lawn suffering from drought. Leaf spot grows in random patterns on lawns and eventually, a reddish mold will appear as the disease progresses in severity.

Leaf spot disease most commonly affects Kentucky bluegrass and bermudagrass.

If you suspect leaf spot disease, what should you do to help your lawn?

If you notice drought-like conditions in your lawn in late spring or early summer and know that your lawn is receiving proper watering, the issue is likely leaf spot. If leaf spot is misidentified as drought and you amp up the watering in your lawn, you can exacerbate the issue and aid the fungus in its spread, causing more harm to your lawn than good. Instead, contact a professional to assess your lawn's health concern, ensuring that the issue is leaf spot, so that the correct treatment can be supplied. Without this confirmation, you could accidentally make conditions worse and still have a disease on your hands to resolve later!

Lawn care professionals can apply a curative treatment and curate a plan to bring your lawn back to full health.

Close up on healthy grass in the summer sun after regular lawn care in Bondurant, IA.

With a lawn care professional on the case, you can be confident that your lawn is in capable hands. Professionals will be able to administer curative, tried-and-true treatments that are highly effective against leaf spot disease to prevent further damage from being done to your lawn. Once the disease is defeated, they will reassess the health of your turf, curating a plan to bring your lawn back to full health.

Often, this path to health is paved with routine lawn care. Fertilization will feed essential nutrients to your grass so that it can repair and regrow any blades that need it. Aeration and overseeding are also helpful, reducing soil compaction so that the deep roots of your grass can access resources and planting fresh grass seed to fill out any bare spots left by the leaf spot disease.

We can help identify and combat leaf spot disease. Call today to schedule our leaf spot control treatment!

Our team at A+ Lawn & Landscape is proud to promote exceptional health in the lawns we care for, allowing them to become the lush, green lawns our customers dream of. A large part of this is our highly effective lawn disease control that combat fungi like leaf spot, preventing the disease from spreading and damaging your lawn further. When you suspect your lawn has leaf spot or drought, our technicians will arrive and assess the symptoms of your lawn, identifying the issue to ensure we are applying the correct treatment. We also offer preventative treatments where our team will visit once a month and spray a liquid application to protect your lawn against leaf spot, summer patch, brown patch, and more. These services are available to commercial and residential property owners in Des Moines, West Des Moines, Ankeny, and nearby areas in Iowa. Call our team at (515) 289-2020 today to schedule your treatment!