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Yellow Tall Fescue

10 years ago

I need some help with my front lawn. Last summer i got what i think was dollar spot fungus. I treated with fungacide and we ended up redoing the entire front with new topsoil and reseeded with tall fescue.. Everything looked great all through the fall and then this summer the new grass has been yellow.. I have fertalized and just don't know what is wrong.. It is only my very front yard that looks like this.. I have photos of my lawn but don't know how to put them here.. What else could cause the entire front yard to yellow? it isn't just patches.. I used a soil test kit and the ph levels are normal range.. I even put down a light layer of humas/manure.. nothing seems to be fixing the yellow. The only thing i haven't done is insect control.

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Comments (7)

ltshears
Original Author
10 years ago
here are some photos
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tiemco
10 years ago
Could be any number of things. Soil deficiencies or disease would be the most likely cause. Another thing could be that the yellow grass isn't tall fescue. Have you compared the yellow grass to some green tall fescue? That soil test you did yourself is somewhat of a waste as tall fescue can look good in a wide range of pH's. You would be better off sending your soil to a professional soil lab (www.loganlabs.com) to see if you are deficient in micronutrients, as well as checking your soil's overall health.
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ltshears
Original Author
10 years ago
It should be Tall Fescue since i planted Kentucky 31 Tall Fescue..
tiemco
10 years ago
"It should be Tall Fescue since i planted Kentucky 31 Tall Fescue.."

I hate to burst your bubble, but not all tall fescue is created equally. K-31 is one of the oldest commercially available tall fescues (late 70's), and while it is very drought tolerant, and very disease resistant, it consistently scores dead last in terms of color and turf quality. A lot of progress has been made since then, and some of the newer cultivars are dark green and fine bladed, so much so that they blend very well with many varieties of KBG. That being said, healthy K-31 shouldn't be yellow, more of a light to medium green. Yellow grass usually indicates lack of certain nutrients, or disease. From your pictures it doesn't look yellow, but more along the lines of what K-31 generally looks like (do a google image search for K-31 tall fescue for comparison).
ltshears
Original Author
10 years ago
Should i start over, or just overseed with a different type of seed? Thanks
tiemco
10 years ago
If you overseed with some of the newer cultivars, they will never blend well with K-31. If it was my lawn I would start over in the late summer/early fall.
kiki_thinking
10 years ago
My sympathies, ltshears, I asked my local place to point me to a fescue and k31 is what they sold me, at the time i didnt know any better. Now I have a yellowish-green coarse lawn. But I guess it is still better than the patchy weedy stuff I used to have ; )

Probably will kill it off in a couple of years and redo.

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