Did anyone experience larger than normal winter kill or increased frequency of brown patches this spring? Grasses at 6500 ft are very late to the party (seemed to really grow and green just this week) but I have some areas that are completely dead. The areas were OK in the fall so were affected over the winter.
Curious what others experienced and any tips.
I live in Colorado Springs, and have not seen anything abnormal this season. How long have you lived at this elevation and what have you done for your lawn? This summer is the greenest for the least cost I have seen in my 10+ years here.
I don’t irrigate in the winter, and don’t do much in the yard till at least April, nothing in the garden till Mother’s Day at the earliest, if not Memorial Day.
@Hooper - Hi, Denver here, about 5400’. Yes, have had some problems this summer. We had our lawn redone (stripped out, resodded) about two years ago. Last year everything was fine except for a couple of hard soil spots. This summer, areas in the front that are high sun exposure started to develop brown spots, mostly small but a couple of moderate size (2 sq ft or so). Had our arbor guy stop by and he said it was a fungus called “ascochyta leaf blight” and was showing up all over town. Odd thing was that none of our neighbors had it and our back yard was fine (less sun though).
I started a fungus treatment program (every two weeks) to stop it and just this last week have cleaned the dead grass out of all the spots and seed patched them. We’ll see how this goes. Next season I’m going to do a prophylactic fungus treatment at the very start of the season just in case. Don’t know if this is the same as what your seeing.
Just noticed your post was from June. That’s when all this started for us as well.
@davelr, if you have a female dog, you might just have a urine problem. I doubt it’s your issue, but it’s something real that does happen. It seems to be less an issue with a male dog.
Thanks, but no dogs. As I said fungus which appears to have been encouraged by the early dry drought conditions here this year. Many trees are also having problems due to these conditions as well.
I don’t know how long you have lived in Colorado @davelr, but this has been the wettest summer I recall in COS since the Waldo Canyon / Black Forest Fires. We did have a very dry winter here, for sure, but that’s been true since 2007/2008. Not abnormal for the Front Range, at least from my experience, and my understanding for long time locals.
Thanks for this info @davelr. I recently had a couple areas of my front lawn go brown after what seemed like no changes to our watering routine. I’m curious if I am struggling with the same fungus! We are trying to decide if we tackle it this season even though fall is quickly approaching or if we just hope it’s gone by next season… I will have to do some research to see if the fungus is tough enough to survive Denver winters lol 
Hey, @mckynzee, I went ahead and treated the lawn with Bayer granular fungal treatment every two weeks until it looked like the fungus went inactive. I cleaned out the spots of dead grass and put in some seed and soil a couple of weeks ago with “some” success, but it at least looks like the fungus is gone and the spots will fill in. In the spring I’m going to put down fungus treatment right away to (hopefully) keep it from popping up again. The guy that looked at it for us said they’d seen a lot of it around town and felt it was aggravated by stressed lawns due to the early dry heat this spring. Funny thing is it only happened in our front yard, back was fine. Go figure.
BTW, FWIW I’ve lived in CO for about 60 yrs.