What is Snow Mold and How Can I Prevent it?
With spring just around the corner, you may be gearing up for your spring yard work and landscaping projects. While you prepare to beautify your home for the season, you should also prepare for the common fungal disease, known as snow mold, that could affect your lawn.
This lawn disease appears toward the end of winter when the last layer of snow melts away from your yard. February and March are the months where we receive a high volume of calls from clients who need us to come out and examine their damaged lawns.
What Is Snow Mold?
Snow mold is known as a type of fungal lawn disease that affects grass in the earlier months in the year. This lawn disease is common in Pittsburgh and other areas where there are freezing temperatures and snow for months at a time.
As the snow begins to melt away, lawn affected by snow mold will have yellow patches of lawn. If Pittsburgh experiences a snowy, wet spring, this will create conditions where the snow mold can begin to spread throughout the lawn.
How to Identify Snow Mold in Your Yard
Snow mold causes grass to have a yellow color with a straw-like appearance. When it comes to identifying snow mold, it is essential to know that there are two types of snow mold, gray and pink.
Each type of snow mold can be determined by the tint of your grass. Both the gray and pink snow mold are different versions of the snow mold fungus.
What Happens if I Don’t Get Rid of the Snow Mold?
Snow mold lays dormant in grass plant debris during the summer and reemerges when the temperatures drop again. Keep in mind that although this lawn disease is not a threat in the summer, if left untreated, it can continue to come back every year, especially after a wet winter and spring season.
If you allow the snow mold to go untreated, it will spread and continue to damage the grass. As it spreads, more patches of your grass will die and will need to be replaced, causing you to invest more time, money, and effort into fixing your lawn throughout the summer.
How Can I Prevent Snow Mold?
A snowy, wet winter in Pittsburgh is usually unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean you have to worry about snow mold every spring. Having a lawn care service maintenance plan can provide your grass with a variety of benefits, including customized fertilization that is designed to help your lawn resist disease and fungi.
You can also take steps in the fall season to prevent giving snow mold a place to live on your lawn. These steps include:
- Mowing your lawn throughout the end of the season to keep it short before the snowfall.
- Using fall core aeration to reduce thatch in your yard and prevent snow mold from living there.
- Raking up as many leaves as you can to help reduce the moisture on the ground.
Think You Have Snow Mold? Superior Lawn Care Can Help!
In the early parts of the infection, snow mold can be treated fairly easily. You can lightly rake out patches of snow mold to provide the surface with more air. This will help promote conditions for your grass to become healthy again.
The next step is to apply fertilizers and a crabgrass barrier to your lawn in the early spring. After this is complete, you can call Superior Lawn Care for advice on spring seeding to help restore your lawn to a beautiful green.
Professional Lawn Care Maintenance Services in Pittsburgh
If you notice snow mold in your yard, give Superior Lawn Care a call. We have the tools and the expertise to treat your snow mold and keep your lawn healthy and resistant to lawn diseases throughout. We are proud to serve the entire Pittsburgh area, including Wexford, Indiana, Upper St. Clair, Penn Township, Moon Township, Cranberry, and North Huntingdon.