One of the worst parts of my jobs is delivering people bad news. For instance, in the last few years numerous landowners have lost mature dogwood trees to a disease called dogwood die back.

This year a large number of you learned about bacterial wilt with tomatoes in your home vegetable garden. In both cases there was not much me or anyone else could do to provide help after the fact.

Today I want to talk about take-all root rot, a fungal disease, in St. Augustine lawns. This is something I am just seeing for the first time in these numbers since coming to Natchez in 2007.

Q: What could be causing my yard to die off?

A: The biggest problems we see in St. Augustine lawns in our area are chinch bugs and brown patch. Brown patch is usually a bigger problem during the cooler months of spring and fall during times of rainfall and high moisture. Chinch bugs are more obvious during hot dry times in area of full sun.

However, I have seen about half a dozen yards this week that have clear symptoms of take-all root rot, which can be confused with both chinch bugs and brown patch. This disease can have devastating impacts on established lawns and are harder to detect in early stages.

Q: What is the major difference between brown patch and take all?

A: The biggest way to tell the two apart is with brown patch the lawn dies off in small or large areas when the leaf blade looses color and dies. However, the stolons and root system below are still alive and the grass can then regenerate. With take all the root system dies first then the leaf blades show signs of stress, so by the time you see the grass turning brown the root system is already dead.

Take all is easy to detect. If you try to pull up a handful of St. Augustine lawn the runners often pull up and the whole root system comes out of the ground. With brown patch the leaves may appear dead but you can still pull up the roots and they appear strong.

If the roots are still white and the stolons still have some color you probably have chinch bugs or brown patch and in time the live roots will provide new lush turf. However if you can grab a handful of just a piece of St. Augustine and it pulls straight up and the roots below the runners or stolons are black then there is not much we can do to save that area because the roots are dead and take all is likely the culprit.

Q: What can be done about take all?

A: I have been seeing this mostly in St. Augustine lawn bermuda and centipede are also susceptible to this problem. Just like with brown patch, a fungicide treatment is the only real option and it has limited effectiveness. Some scientist say this is a stress related disease which things like excessive rainfall, excessive nitrogen fertilizer, over liming soils, excessive herbicide use or poor management practice contribute to.

However, not enough research has been accomplished to provide a direct cause of the disease or treatment options. Few fungicides provide acceptable control to reduce spreading, but sterol inhibitors such as triadimefon (brand name Bayleton T/O) may help, as well a stobulurin fungicide such as azoxystrobin (brand name Heritage).

I am not sure about reseeding or replanting intervals on injured lawns at this time but I will talk with more experts and try to determine more options.

Please call if you need help determining if you have this problem.

David Carter is the director of the Adams County Extension Service. He can be reached at 601-445-8201.