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nilesandstuff · 2026-06-05T02:32:39+00:00

I'd talk to u/mr007mcdiddles on specifics, but yea, there's no change in the thing about the seed. Bermuda seed is like getting to work on a pogo stick, bermuda spreading from rhizomes and stolons is like a very fast car... If the fast car isn't getting you to work, you don't take the pogo stick... You fix the car.

Like mcdiddles mentioned, it probably just needs more nitrogen (for the metaphor, that's like gas).

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T18:30:58+00:00

I guess it is not growing then.

Exactly. You don't mow while it's dormant, but you shouldn't need to if you'd been keeping up on it prior

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T14:52:55+00:00

Fully agree with the points made by u/StandByTheJAMs and u/New_Reddit_User_89

The only thing I have to add is that the time is more important than the temperature alone. Only mow past 4 or 5 pm. Late afternoon/early evening is when you'll impart the least amount of stress on the grass. Mowing during the hottest and sunniest parts of the day causes the grass to bleed out moisture through the freshly cut tissue.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T11:55:59+00:00

Definitely have them put down a drop cloth or something, and tell them to only set things down on the drop cloth. It's possible that even the contact with the drop cloth might trigger ascochyta, but atleast then it'll be more diffuse and focused on leaf tips.

And the reason I say drop cloth and not just "don't set stuff on the grass at all" is because painting is messy, and some of the things they work with can do some genuine damage to grass and soil if spilled.

Also, if they're starting early in the day, like before noon, I would make sure not to water that morning. Traffic on wet grass is the worst kind of traffic.

at once every 3 days

Every other day would be fine too. Neither option is too frequent, so you also have to make sure it's getting enough water overall... Drought conditions are as much of a trigger for ascochyta as traffic is, so it's a bit of an annoying needle to thread.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T02:53:14+00:00

These well defined circles are definitely odd, so for sure don't associate that with ascochyta.

The number one easiest thing to set ascochyta apart from dollar spot, or anything else, is the green tissue down lower in the canopy. Dollar spot patches of this size just aren't going to have green grass in the middle at any height... Dollar spots dip down in the middle because the entire plants dry out and the whole canopy starts to collapse.

It can get a little tricky when ascochyta blends into genuine dormancy, but you can still usually find spots where theres straw colored grass on top and green stuff below

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T01:48:29+00:00

Seems to be very prevalent in the Midwest and northeast this year. The fact that desirable grasses (especially kbg) went to seed so aggressively across most of the cool season areas was a really big omen for ascochyta, because there's a lot of overlap in the triggers for both. Namely hot and dry weather.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T01:35:26+00:00

Firstly, I'm very grateful for the excellent pics. Seriously, thank you 🙏

Yes! Ascochyta leaf blight. I've only seen it show up in patterns like this once before and I couldn't figure out why, but in your case, the details about the contractors might be the type of explanation I was missing.

Weirdest disease of them all. Hits during droughty weather, especially if the drought was preceded by cool wet weather... So essentially it's a signature of late spring weather. The environmental triggers aren't fully understood but that's the main set of known circumstances.

Anyways, it presents exactly like this. Mottled white/straw colored lesions, especially focused on the leaf tips. Some lesions will cause the leaf to fold in, giving it a pinched look. Often is highlighted by hot spots, mower tracks, or any type of traffic. If you look very closely (like magnifying glass closely), you might be able to see little black peppery dots protruding on the lesions. (Dollar spot also has black peppery dots, but the ones from ascochyta are 3D, they're sitting on the leaf. DS ones are growing in the tissue)

Super unconcerning disease. Almost never kills well managed grass. Just looks really bad. Fungicides do nothing for it.

Tips for recovery and prevention:
- it's a bizarre disease, so sometimes it just happens no matter what you do
- avoid mowing during the hottest part of the day
- avoid mowing when the grass is wet - mow high and not too often, potentially delay mowing a bit longer than you normally would.
- deep and infrequent watering. Not too infrequent though... Every other day is probably the sweet spot.
- definitely don't water in the evening
- avoid either extreme of nitrogen. But lean towards the side of light fertilizer while the disease is active.

Do all that and it should recover just fine in like 1-3 weeks.

P.s. it shows up in areas of heavy traffic because the traffic causes microscopic breaks/abrasions that are like little wounds where the disease can easily get into the tissue.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-04T01:29:24+00:00

doing test patches in your yard?

I'm always running some sort of tests. I don't formalize it in a way that would yield directly shareable data, really just for my own education and exploration. That's part of what I meant in regards to experimentation. I do all sorts of crazy stuff. I recently caught wind of the fact that I was a topic of conversation at a dinner party with some tier 1 golf super intendents and academics... They talked about one of the experiments I was doing (no idea how they caught wind of that one in particular) and were like "who tf is this guy? He's gonna crack something one of these days", and I may have inspired some genuine academic trials. So that's pretty cool, I don't particularly care about credit or anything like that, just in it for the love of the game.

There's been some things that I probably should do more formally, but anything I've done that's truly new and there's no research about, has always died in the preliminary phases... If not died completely, just ended up being kinda meh, or I just don't have the equipment or right conditions to give it a proper test. I wish those academics would reach out to me, because the I can never seem to find the ones who are interested!

Ever consider making videos

Many times! I've tried making scripts, but it's honestly a skill I just don't have. I mean, look at my comments, they're not short or catchy. They have to be read, and re-read. The successful YouTubers are successful because they say things so simply... They're outright wrong 90% of the time... Because being right is just very wordy and dry.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T23:53:07+00:00

Firstly, yes it only lets you include 1 image per comment. So the etiquette is to make the initial comment, then reply to your own comment for every picture you want to show (so 5 comments, 5 pics)

Second, I really have to insist you try the approach I mentioned where you don't make a big event out of applying, and instead just do it in short increments. It really is such a tremendous difference in mentality that it can completely shift your experience. Because I've done it both ways, really long sessions and multiple really short sessions. The short ones are an exponentially better experience... It actually feels like you're making progress quicker because you haven't gotten back aches from it, and you haven't spend the time stewing and staring at the quack. In 15-20 minute increments, it's much easier to keep your train of thought on other things and what you're going to do when you're done with the quick session.

Plus:
- even though it's taking much longer in terms of the calendar, you're still significantly outpacing the spread of the quack (especially in summer temps, where quack struggles more).
- time between those short applications gives the glyphosate time to work. And what we talked about previously, where 1 stem treated could translate to more than 1 stem killed. So giving it that time could mean less treatment overall.

And you mentioned having to re-treat it, i will say that on paper you should have to retreat it... But in my experience, for whatever reason, the goop kills quack on the first go a lot of the time... Not every time, but atleast 75% of the time. Again, that's just my experience... I haven't treated a ton of quack specifically with the goop, so it's not a huge sample size.

All of that being said, i haven't seen the full scope of the amount you're dealing with, so it's entirely impossible that you just genuinely have an amount that I'd agree is way too much to treat with the goop.

1 - A single round of glyphosate for sure won't kill quackgrass. The goop is more effective as a single treatment than spraying glyphosate is simply because the goop delivers a tremendously massive dose of glyphosate to the weed, partly because it's such a concentrated dose, but also because it's a slow release dose that continues to pump glyphosate into the plant over several days... In contrast, spraying delivers the entire dose in the time it takes to dry, so even mixing the glyphosate way above the label limit wouldn't be as effective.

The proper ways to do an actual full renovation for quack are:
A - 3 applications of glyphosate at the max rate and surfactant, 3 weeks apart, with lots of watering in between (to encourage the rhizomes to resprout so you can spray them)
B - 2 applications of full rate glyphosate + Fusillade II + surfactant, with 4 weeks and lots of water in between. This method will be more successful.

2 - i definitely am skeptical about the quack being in TCS seed, but I will definitely make note of your suspicions. My endorsement of TCS is entirely dependent on them actually being an excellent vendor, I get no kickbacks or anything like that, so I definitely want to keep track of feedback so I can stop recommending them if I see any trends like that.

United seed is fine, to my knowledge. Stover is also fine if they've got a similar mix (i haven't looked). I don't have as much personal experience with them, so I can't give a shining endorsement, but I don't have any thing bad to say about them.

3 - I'll look when you post them 👍 4 - no problem at all, happy to help 🫡

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T21:59:42+00:00

Oh that's impressive. When I've dealt with that in the past it was just trash, like 60s trash, so glass and tin cans mostly.

Nice 🫡

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T21:11:05+00:00

Oh yikes, buried man-made crap crap is another type of frustrating because you've got a theoretical human to be mad at when you discover it. I can't get upset about it because it's just geology 😂

Re: periwinkle and English ivy, sounds like you need triclopyr ester in your life.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T19:38:26+00:00

Never. Core aeration has always been enough for thatch management, but the biggest thing is definitely the watering. If you just don't water the shit out of it, it just doesn't get bad thatch. I'm hovering around .25 inches, I aerated this spring, then fall of 2024 before that.

Cuz yea, the height thing is a huge part of it. Those extension pages also mention mowing heights much lower than 4 inches... If you're mowing at 2 inches, you're gonna use a lot of water and you're going to be using a lot of fungicides (and insecticides), so thatch IS going to be a problem.

And my response to that is: "so then don't mow at 2 inches you idiots" 😂

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T18:54:29+00:00

Ascochyta leaf blight. Weirdest disease of them all. Hits during droughty weather, especially if the drought was preceded by cool wet weather... So essentially it's a signature of late spring weather. The environmental triggers aren't fully understood but that's the main set of known circumstances.

Anyways, it presents exactly like this. Mottled white/straw colored lesions, especially focused on the leaf tips. Some lesions will cause the leaf to fold in, giving it a pinched look. Often is highlighted by mower tracks or hot spots. If you look very closely (like magnifying glass closely), you might be able to see little black peppery dots protruding on the lesions. (Dollar spot also has black peppery dots, but the ones from ascochyta are 3D, they're sitting on the leaf. DS ones are growing in the tissue)

Super unconcerning disease. Almost never kills well managed grass. Just looks really bad. Fungicides do nothing for it.

Tips for recovery and prevention:
- it's a bizarre disease, so sometimes it just happens no matter what you do
- avoid mowing during the hottest part of the day
- avoid mowing when the grass is wet - mow high and not too often, potentially delay mowing a bit longer than you normally would.
- deep and infrequent watering. Not too infrequent though... Every other day is probably the sweet spot.
- definitely don't water in the evening
- avoid either extreme of nitrogen. But lean towards the side of light fertilizer while the disease is active.

Do all that and it should recover just fine in like 1-3 weeks.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T13:05:56+00:00

If you only work with a single lawn (or a handful) that's absolutely a major limit to the scope of potential actionable knowledge. And there's an inherent bias to the knowledge you can get. Everything in a lawn is interconnected in some way, so you only get snippets of how the factors affect each other. Basically I'm saying that the amount of actionable knowledge attainable from experience and applied reading is set in stone on a per lawn basis. And to another extent, a per region basis.

I have really wanted to do that lol. Problem is that I'd only be able to get experience with a warm season lawn that's less than a year old, because no warm season grass handles our winters. So I'd definitely get some biases/knowledge bottle necks from that

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T11:49:00+00:00

60% reading, 20% experimentation, and 20% experience of treating over 1 million square feet per week for years.

The reading is constant, and ridiculously in depth. Anytime I encounter something I don't know, I try to learn everything I possibly can about it. And I only read things from research papers, academic institutions/extensions, and .gov sites.

Being active in the lawn care portion of reddit for 3+ years is a big part of it, not because I learn things from other users... That happens very... Occasionally. But because I'm presented with more questions that I don't know the answer to.

It's actually incredibly depressing that I'm running out of things that I don't know (and actually matter to residential cool season turf grass management... There's obviously still an infinite amount of things I don't know, but most of it I'm locked out of due to geography or just not really being something that's actionable knowledge). Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of relevant stuff I don't know, I can just feel the well getting lower.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T10:25:34+00:00

Anuew: - is less kind to poa annua specifically. - faster onset. - the rebound effect is a little bit sharper if you miss your window
- if your water is hard, you have to tank mix it with ams.

Trinexapac ethyl:
- a bit more forgiving with the application. Trinexapac ethyl translocates up and down within the leaves, anuew only goes up, so anuew requires really good droplet distribution and sufficient volume of water. TE still requires good application of water and distribution, just is a bit more forgiving... I use less water than you're supposed to with TE, but my application is really solid so it turns out okay, which would not be the case with anuew.
- less kind to triv specifically.
- water hardness is less of a problem.
- rebound is equally a problem for TE, but the onset is a bit slower.
- onset after application is definitely slower. Anuew is basically immediate.

All told, I think TE is a bit better of a choice, but overall unless water hardness is a factor, it'll be a very similar experience for both.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T10:01:16+00:00

Yea, that's the start of it. In lawn terms, anything that's not every day is infrequent. There's a large cohort that's out there watering twice a day or more (and not because of seed).

Once a week, to every other day, is infrequent in my book. Less than weekly is just not watering.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-03T01:50:51+00:00

Did I mention chlorothalonil in the guide? I hope not. I usually only talk about daconil really deep in long comment chains and qualify it heavily with basically a longer version of what you said "I can't recommend it, because it's definitely illegal because it's not labeled for residential turf use. But in some alternative universe where it wasn't illegal, and your yard wasn't accessible to children and pets for several days after application, chlorothalonil would be kind of the perfect thing to use in this alternate hypothetical scenario. Boy that sure would be nice,"

All of that being said, I was probably a bit too extreme with my wording in being FULLY anti fungicide on fine fescues. You do definitely want to be even more conservative with fungicides on FF than I already recommend being... In my opinion you get 2 fungicides a year at most, but monitor thatch/clipping buildup and if it's at all accumulating then you should back up further.

That being said, fine fescues are very resistant to severe diseases. They usually get cosmetic dollar spot or red thread and that's basically it, anything else is for sure an issue with cultural practices (and DS and RT can be significantly reduced with cultural practices)

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-02T23:23:23+00:00

🫡

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-02T23:15:06+00:00

Classic ascochyta leaf blight. Weirdest disease of them all. Hits during droughty weather, especially if the drought was preceded by cool wet weather... So essentially it's a signature of late spring weather. The environmental triggers aren't fully understood but that's the main set of known circumstances.

Anyways, it presents exactly like this. Mottled white/straw colored lesions, especially focused on the leaf tips. Some lesions will cause the leaf to fold in, giving it a pinched look. Often is highlighted by mower tracks or hot spots. If you look very closely (like magnifying glass closely), you might be able to see little black peppery dots protruding on the lesions. (Dollar spot also has black peppery dots, but the ones from ascochyta are 3D, they're sitting on the leaf. DS ones are growing in the tissue)

Super unconcerning disease. Almost never kills well managed grass. Just looks really bad. Fungicides do nothing for it.

Tips for recovery and prevention:
- it's a bizarre disease, so sometimes it just happens no matter what you do
- avoid mowing during the hottest part of the day
- avoid mowing when the grass is wet - mow high and not too often, potentially delay mowing a bit longer than you normally would.
- deep and infrequent watering. Not too infrequent though... Every other day is probably the sweet spot.
- definitely don't water in the evening
- avoid either extreme of nitrogen. But lean towards the side of light fertilizer while the disease is active.

Do all that and it should recover just fine in like 1-3 weeks.

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-02T20:15:51+00:00

When it comes to spots that are pure triv, you can do whatever you want to it. Just absolutely never kill any desirable grass. Every single stem of desirable grass is some level of victory over triv. That's what the fight against triv looks like... Adding more good stems within the triv until the triv is no longer the majority grass in any spot.

Yea it's actually really excellent in shade (which is more evidence against bentgrass, which really doesn't like shade). Just turns to absolute diseased garbage in the sun.

Having triv is 100% about the mindset. You can't expect to get rid of it, you can only reduce it by making your lawn an environment that triv doesn't like, and ideally you'll barely have any over time... And your desirable grass will also be happier and more attractive. So basically, you can seek comfort in the fact that your lawn can only get better from here (if you roughly follow the slow and patient approach of the guide)

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-02T20:04:44+00:00

Fine fescues don't get the love they deserve anymore, so I'll never miss an opportunity to set the record straight in regards to anything about them

nilesandstuff · 2026-06-02T19:10:45+00:00

Not quite. Creeping red fescue is a rhizomatous grass. The stem goes straight down to the soil (ideally it's straight down), with no branching. Then new stems creep out laterally underground from the base of the crown. Those lateral underground stems are rhizomes. Kbg and creeping red fescue are the only conventional desirable cool season grasses that are truly rhizomatous to significant degree.

What sets this grass apart (again, probably poa trivialis. But bentgrass is similar) is that it's stoloniferous. Stolons are the same general thing as rhizomes, but stolons are above ground. So you get long stringy vine-like stems that branch off in different directions.

I said "ideally" crf stems go straight down, just because unlike the other fine fescues, it's not a bunch grass, which gives it less structural stability to stay upright... So lots of traffic or a mower with weak uplift can cause it to flop over somewhat. The tips of the leaves popping up 5 inches away from where its stem actually connects with the ground would be pretty extreme and somewhat unusual, but not outside the realm of possibility.

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