Fairy Rings and How to Manage Them

If you’ve spotted one or more circular rings of dead grass or mushrooms growing on your lawn, your lawn is most likely suffering from a fungal infection known as fairy rings.

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Late summer and autumn are the most common times of year when fairy rings are likely to appear. The botanical name of this fungus is Marasmium oreades and it makes its home in the roots of turf. This results in a change in appearance of the lawn and the appearance of mushrooms or toadstools. There are some other types of fungi that can result in fairy rings, in addition to resulting to enhanced growth of the lawn.

Every type of lawn can be susceptible to the establishment of fairy rings.

Quite often fairy rings are not recognised by lawn owners until the toadstools start to appear. However, here are other symptoms that you may notice:

• A ring of dead grass that is irregular in shape and expands across the grass.
• Next to the dead grass of the ring, the grass may look to be greener than normal.
• Brown toadstools appearing during late summer or autumn

How to control fairy rings

Surprisingly, there are no fungicides on the market to stop fairy rings. As you won’t have chemicals at hand, you could attempt to control the ring by removing it by digging down up to 1 foot in depth, and replacing either with soil and grass seeds or new turf.

One of the biggest negative results that you’ll see with this type of fungus is its water repellent properties. It can prevent moisture from reaching the roots of your turf and you’ll see dead grass start to appear, in particular during drier weather. The greener grass that grows close by is a result of being next to the decaying dead grass that will begin to release nutrients.

These fairy rings can expand by up to 1ft per year.