How to Treat Summer Patch Disease in the Lawn

If your lawn is covered with irregular brown patches, the problem may be summer patch. Here's how to tell.

Almost every lawn gets a few brown spots from time to time—maybe you mowed too short or forgot to move the kiddie pool. But if your lawn is dotted with wilted, straw-colored patches and rings that keep getting bigger all summer, you might be dealing with a more serious issue called summer patch.

Summer patch is a highly destructive lawn fungus that kills grass by attacking and destroying its root system. Before you can fix the problem, you need to be sure that’s what you’re dealing with. Here’s how to identify and treat summer patch to get your lawn back on track.

How to Identify Summer Patch

Summer patch changes its appearance as the disease gets worse. Look for these signs in your lawn:

Early Warning Signs: The first signs are often dark-green, wilted, irregular circles of grass up to 2 inches in diameter.
Disease Spread: As summer progresses, these turn into straw-colored patches, rings, and crescents that increase in size.
Late-Stage Symptoms: The enlarged patches may develop a yellow or bronze outer edge.
Final Stages: In the final stages, individual grass blades will look like they are dying back from the tip.

What Causes Summer Patch?

As its name suggests, summer patch thrives in the warm, wet weather of summer. However, other factors can also create a welcoming environment for this fungus and lead to a stressed lawn:

Compacted soil with poor drainage
Watering too often
Mowing grass too short

Grass Types Most Affected by Summer Patch

Summer patch typically affects cool-season grasses like:

Bluegrasses
Fine fescues (creeping red and hard types)

Other grass types, such as tall fescue, perennial ryegrass, and zoysiagrass, are more resistant to the disease.

Your Best Defense: How to Prevent Summer Patch

A thick, well-cared-for lawn is less likely to develop diseases like summer patch. Keep your lawn in great shape with these simple practices:

Feed Your Lawn: Provide your lawn with the nutrients it needs to stay strong by feeding it 4 times a year. If you’re not sure where to start, try a personalized Scotts® Lawn Care Plan.
Water Correctly: Water deeply and infrequently to encourage deep root growth.
Mow at the Right Height: Mow at the correct height for your grass type.
Aerate as Needed: Aerating helps relieve soil compaction and improves air and water circulation.
Choose a Resistant Grass Type: Reseed or overseed your lawn with a Turf Builder® Grass Seed product that contains a turfgrass species that is resistant to summer patch.

How to Treat Summer Patch When It Appears

If you think your lawn has summer patch, you need to treat it right away.

For Existing Disease: Use a Scotts® spreader to apply a systemic fungicide like Scotts® DiseaseEX™ Lawn Fungicide. It offers both curative and preventative control, starts working in just 24 hours, and protects for up to 4 weeks. Apply at the first sign of disease.
For Prevention: If you’ve had issues with summer patch before, use Scotts® Turf Builder® Healthy Plus Lawn Food to stop it from coming back. It prevents summer patch and 26 other diseases while also feeding your lawn to help it recover from stress. Apply it in the spring when conditions are favorable for disease but before it appears.

Remember to always follow the label directions when using any lawn care product.

How to Repair Your Lawn After Summer Patch

Once the summer patch fungus is under control, it’s time to repair the damage.

For Bare Spots: Use an all-in-one mix like EZ Seed® to quickly fix bare spots. It combines high-performance grass seed, slow-release fertilizer, and a super-absorbent growing material to help grass grow wherever you need it.
For Thin Areas: To restore your lawn’s thickness, apply Turf Builder® Thick'R Lawn®, a 3-in-1 solution of seed, fertilizer, and soil improver. Select the best product for your grass type.

For the best results, it’s best to repair and seed your lawn during the spring or fall.

Don't let summer patch get you down. By taking action as soon as you see warning signs and keeping up with regular maintenance, you can kick summer patch to the curb.