Expert: Ronald B Persaud - 6/22/2009

Question
Hello-

We have had a ton of rain in Central Florida.  However, after all the rain, to my
surprise my recently laid sod (3 months ago) was not turning deep green.  I
used Scott's fertilizer 1 month ago and milorganite a month earlier.  Despite
the massive amount of rain, I figured brown grass meant  more water , so I
set my sprinklers to 20 min in the early morning and 20 min in the evening
for a week or so.  Last week I woke up and there were mushrooms all over my
yard and are dark moldy covering over the lawn.  It seemed to change color
over night.  After looking on the internet, I used baking soda and water to kill
the mushrooms.  This worked, but only for a day.  The mushrooms and dark
black covering was back the next morning.  I then went to Home Depot and
bought a liquid copper product and sprayed the yard.  Next in a neurotic
state I bought a fungicide (Bayer advanced fungicide for laws) and put in the
spreader.  I  have since stopped watering and was hoping the lack of water
would starve the fungus.  Please help, should I be watering my lawn with a
fungus?  My lawn feels very dry and appears dead in many spots.  However,
the roots appear healthy and green. Any ideas on what this might be?  Please
guide me in the right direction, I can't sleep without a green healthy lawn.

Answer
Trust me! A lawn condition is nothing to lose sleep over, unless your livelihood depends on it. There are too many factors outside of our control. Use the opportunity to learn about trouble shooting lawn problems. Try a "Master Gardener's" program sponsored by the County Extension Service. If you use the internet, approach it with a degree of healthy skepticism. Follow the links and try to get the full picture. For instance, one Bayer product (not necessarily the one that you used) contains triadimefon as its active ingredient. Triadimefon works better as a preventive, rather than curative, product and the best results can be expected when it is applied at the earliest stage of a fungus infection on the lawn. One therefore has to be able to identify the earliest symptoms of a fungus infection to obtain the best results from this chemical.
My best recommendation is to resume the normal watering program and give the lawn time to recover. Whatever does not recover in 6 to 8 weeks will most likely have to be resodded or reseeded.