Knowledgebase
Brown/dead spots in grass #757565
Asked June 21, 2021, 5:34 PM EDT
Wake County North Carolina
Expert Response
Hi, I am sorry that your question was not responded to earlier. It was somehow missed in our system.
I don't believe this is a dormancy issue, since all the rest of your lawn has fully greened up. It looks like certain areas were either diseased, or suffered a physical/chemical damage from animal urine or herbicide spot spraying. If these were spot sprayed with glyphosate during dormancy, it can sometimes damage the areas sprayed (usually it doesn't, but it can). If the areas are still spreading, I would assume it is a disease issue. Animals often go back to spots where they have urinated before, and these often show up along the road where they get walked, rather than further up in the lawn.
On bermudagrass, large patch is a common disease.https://www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/diseases-in-turf/large-patch-in-turf/ This article lists some fungicides that may be applied to the turf.
Jeana M.
I am sorry but this sample doesn't really provide enough information to say whether this is dollar spot or not. It doesn't follow the description provided in this publication, but it may be further down the road of decomposition, it's hard to say. There is a photo in the publication which follows their description.
"To determine the presence of dollar spot, inspect an individual blade of grass from a healthy looking part of the lawn. Then select a blade from an area just outside of a dead-looking patch of grass. Inspect the individual grass blades for a white lesion or spot that is pinched in the middle and looks like an hourglass. The lesion often occurs in the mid-section of the leaf blade and may have a purple margin. This bleached, hourglass-shaped lesion is characteristic of dollar spot." https://planttalk.colostate.edu/topics/lawns/1522-dollar-spot-turfgrass/
There are several photos at the bottom of an NCSU publication:
https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/dollar-spot-in-turf
look at some more blades of grass and see if you see the hourglass.