The best plan is to look at soil biology, but in a simple way. Are you making best use of your soils? Are you aerating them correctly and efficiently? Do you add anything at all to enhance the soil bacteria and microbes? You should give your lawn soils the same degree of care as soil in other parts of your garden. The use of organic feeds and soil conditioners is a simple way to do this.
Beyond looking after your soil, the one thing you mustn’t do if you have fusarium is to ignore it. During times of extreme weather, where your lawn may be under stress, diligence is critical and can save your lawn from becoming a mess. There are a number of easy steps you can do which can help, but won’t cure.
Moisture: The disease spores thrive on moisture so drying the lawn out as quickly as you can, can help slow it spreading. Knocking the morning dew off the grass is a way to help dry the plant out during winter months. This can be done with a broom, a small blower and even a piece of hosepipe in between two ride-on mowers if your lawn is big enough.
Thatch: Keep on top of your thatch levels. You can slow the spread by ensuring rainfall gets through your lawn quickly rather creating a cold, wet thatch layer.
Mowing: If you do have to mow, refrain from using a roller mower so that you lessen the chance of it being spread. This is actually a sensible mowing practice for winter, not just for disease control.
Ferrous sulphate: Don’t forget our good friend, ferrous sulphate. That’s right, our simple, organic friend can come to the rescue again! A spray of this product can slow and to some extent, stop the disease in its tracks. And it simply does this by ‘drying’ the leaf blades out, thus possibly giving some respite to prevent the disease from worsening.
Fungicides: And last but not least is a simple fungicide treatment, professionally applied. However, don’t think this will be an absolute cure. Given the right conditions, it can and should work, but as some of our best sports venues will confirm, funguses can get resistant to fungicides even.