Ammonium Sulfate Fertilizer
Fighting Lawn Diseases with Ammonium Sulfate Fertilizer
Ammonium sulfate fertilizer and solid lawn care practices can be just the thing that your lawn needs to fend off those lawn born diseases that make lawns an eyesore. If lawn care is not just a point of personal neighborhood pride, but part of your job description, then you should probably get to know a bit mores about the effects of funguses on the color and consistency of certain types of grasses.
You might find the following lawn care information especially useful if you are the central caretaker of a golf course where bent grasses make up many of the airways, or are overseeing the conversion of what used to be a grove of trees into a field of grass. Furthermore, if you live in Kentucky where certain diseases have made a good existence from plaguing bluegrasses, you might also find quite a bit to help you perform you caretaking duties to maximum efficiency.
What are some diseases that ammonium sulfate fertilizer helps fight?
If you are trying to get bent grasses to grow on golf course or where you recently removed a grove of trees, you may find yourself confronted by a particularly nasty fungus. The take-all fungus, as golf-course attendants well know, can leave nasty looking patches of stained, diseased bent grass, making it look as if the attendant has neglected to water it properly in sections.
The normal fungus fighting chemicals and procedures have only mixed results against this scourge of golf courses everywhere. The best way of preventing this fungus from ravaging bent grasses has proven to be the adoption of ammonium sulfate fertilizer.
Why is ammonium sulfate fertilizer effective against the take-all fungus?
Ammonium sulfate fertilizer increases the acidity of lawn soils. This change in the pH largely explains why ammonium sulfate makes such a great fertilizer. The cause has to do with the grass’s ability to increase its intake of the chemical element, manganese. In soils with high pH values bent grasses have difficulty metabolizing manganese thus making bent grasses and wheat vulnerable to funguses like the take-all fungus. Once caretakers apply ammonium sulfate fertilizer however, the pH levels decrease as the acidity rises creating the ideal conditions for microbes that help bent grasses (and, incidentally, wheat) metabolize manganese with greater success.
Researchers have discovered a similar beneficial effect in treating Poa patch, another fungal disease that most commonly ravages Kentucky bluegrass. Treating grasses with ammonium sulfate fertilizer lowered the occurrence of Poa patch by four fifths over the usual nitrate treatment. Because Kentucky bluegrass thrives in that agriculturally tricky climate zone that straddles the spot where the colds of the North give way to the warmer Southern climates, the pH needs of the grasses of this region are very specific. For this reason, the caretaker must carefully monitor the application of ammonium sulfate to make sure the soil does not become overly acidic since this too may harm bluegrass.
Other Practices that Help Reduce Fungal Root Disease
Ammonium sulfate fertilizer, however, doesn’t do the entire job by itself. Besides the normal processes involved in lawn care such as watering, the caretaker can help improve the overall health of the lawns for which he or she is responsible through a couple of basic measures. The caretaker should, first, increase drainage so that there are no standing pools of water (always a breeding ground for root diseases and funguses) and, secondly, take measures to reduce sources of fungal nutrition like lime-based fertilizers. With these measures in hand, the caretaker will increase the chances of having an even coating of verdant growth over the lawns for which he or she is responsible.