PESTICIDES/FERTILIZERS Dollars from Diseases

After 18 years in the lawn care business, Ken Heltemes, owner of a Weed Man franchise in Raleigh, N.C., knows that when applying fungicides to prevent a disease infestation in his clients’ turf, timing is everything.

“In Raleigh, because of the excessive heat and moisture from May to August, preventive disease control is a five application program,” Heltemes explains. “For people in this area, if you have your first fungicide application completed by May 10, 99 out of 100 times you’re going to be right on target.”

According to lawn care operators (LCOs) and fungicide manufacturers, experience identifying diseases and treating them is what makes someone like Heltemes successful.

“The problem I see is that not only do some LCOs not identify the proper disease, but they don’t understand how to treat for it,” explains Steve Stansell, lawn market manager for Syngenta Professional Products, Greensboro, N.C. “A lot of times the homeowner is thinking the problem has something to do with their watering habits or something else going on in their lawns, and they don’t understand they have diseases also.”

For the knowledgeable LCO who can educate his or her customer about diseases and offer fungicide treatments to manage current outbreaks and prevent future problems from recurring, the service can be a profitable one. Also, the advent of newer products at lower price points specifically customized for the LCO is making this service more appealing and affordable for LCOs and their customers.

WHEN DISEASE STRIKES. What determines a particular disease in a given area is a complex interaction of the turfgrass type (species and cultivar), climate in the geographical area, and also many cultural factors (fertility, mowing, irrigation), points out Dave Spak, product development manager, fungicides, Bayer Environmental Science, Research Triangle Park, N.C.

“For instance, tall fescue is a common grass in the transition zone that will routinely develop brown patch during the summer months when temperatures and humidity are high,” Spak explains. “What can further aggravate the problem is overwatering at night or overfertilization, particularly with nitrogen. Disease activity will continue indefinitely provided the weather conditions remain conducive.”

In cool-season regions where Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and fine fescue are prevalent, brown patch can be an issue, in addition to other diseases, such as dollar spot, rust, powdery mildew, leaf spot and summer patch, Spak states.

In warm season regions, where Bermudagrass, St. Augustinegrass, Zoysiagrass and centipedegrass are grown, brown patch, dollar spot, leaf spot, rust and other diseases also may develop. Diseases on warm-season grasses tend to be exacerbated during the cooler months when these grasses are not actively growing, Spak says.

WHAT IS A FUNGICIDE? Fungicides belong to a group of chemicals called pesticides that are used to protect plants from pests. Fungicides can be classified several ways but most often are grouped by how they are used to manage the disease, either as contact or systemic fungicides. Contact fungicides are applied to the foliage and prevent infection of the fungus by remaining on the outside of the leaf. Systemic fungicides are applied to the foliage and in addition to providing a barrier for infection are absorbed into the plant to protect the plant from the inside, Spak defines, listing the following questions as those LCOs should consider when purchasing fungicides.

• Is the fungicide labeled for use on home lawns?
• Is it labeled for the diseases that I would like to control?
• Does it require a tank-mix with other fungicides to control the target diseases?
• How long will it control the disease or diseases that I need to treat?
• What formulations are available (liquid or granule)?
• Does it come in easy-to-use packaging?
• Is it priced right?
• Can it cause any phytotoxicity to the turf or ornamentals that I am regularly treating?
• What specific application techniques are required (spray volume,nozzle type or surfactant)?

When it comes to using contact and systemic fungicides, David Ross, technical manager for turf, Syngenta, Greensboro, N.C., suggests LCOs use contact materials preventively. “You can use the products both ways,” he says, “but we recommend products be used preventively because when you go out there prior to a disease outbreak or early in the cycle of the disease, there’s not much of it there so it’s just easier to control. But if you come out and you have a disease running rampant, it’s going to be harder to control that disease.”

Also, LCOs who manage sites with prior disease histories can implement preventive control measures more easily because they understand the conditions that favor the onset of the diseases, Spak says. But when an LCO doesn’t have this knowledge, curative controls are required. “Some diseases may show up unexpectedly, based on specific weather patterns or changes in cultural practices,” he says. “In this case you have no other choice but to act curatively. Higher rates of fungicides are often necessary to get acceptable control of the disease when applied curatively because the disease is more advanced.

“Preventive applications generally are a better value than curative applications,” Spak adds. “The old saying ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ applies here.”

Though, in the past, fungicides were more focused to the golf course care market and, therefore, were priced higher than LCOs would have liked, some fungicide manufacturers have introduced or plan to introduce fungicides specific to the lawn care market that are priced more reasonably, providing them with more opportunity for revenue growth in disease control services.

Some of these newer products also have two active ingredients vs. just one to broaden the disease spectrum, providing systemic and contact control of more than one disease at the same time, Stansell says. “This can be a very cost effective way for LCOs to control diseases,” he shares.
 
“Since single fungicides don’t control all diseases, two active ingredients are very desirable,” Spak adds. “Also disease control is often better when you combine lower rates of two fungicides compared to a high rate of a single fungicide. And the convenience of mixing a single product rather than having to buy, store and mix two products makes applying a two-ingredient product easier.”

ELEVATING PRODUCT EFFECTIVENESS. No product will control a lawn disease unless it is timed and applied correctly.

For starters, Stansell says proper disease identification is necessary to fungicide success. “If an LCO has identified that the lawn has a certain disease, the advantage is they can protect the homeowner’s turf from dying by controlling that disease with fungicides. Diseases will actually kill spots or sections of the lawn and make it look very bad so knowing the disease that needs to be controlled and being able to match it with the right product is half the battle in terms of preventing this from happening.”

“Anyone who is doing lawn work and hasn’t done fungicide work in the past would have to learn the diseases and be clear, because a lot of the diseases look very much like an insect problem, for instance, so properly identifying the pathogen is important,” Ross adds, condoning proper training for technicians so they can identify the various diseases and treat them effectively.

Jeff Kollenkark, owner of a Weed Man franchise in Fresno, Calif., agrees. “You must properly identify the disease and evaluate the weather pattern and what time of year you’re in to determine whether it warrants a fungicide application,” he suggests. “I think knowing the disease is a key step otherwise you could be wasting money by putting the wrong product down. Once you get beyond that it’s about doing what’s best for the customer.”

Following label directions regarding specific requirements after application is also important. “The majority of fungicides are most effective when they are allowed to dry on the leaf, but each fungicide has specific requirements,” Spak says. “Therefore, it’s important to be aware of adverse weather or untimely irrigation. Some diseases, particularly soil diseases like fairy ring, require watering-in before the fungicide has dried on the leaf. Once the spray has dried on the foliage it becomes difficult to wash off.”

Concerning post-application practices, Heltemes recommends LCOs warn homeowners not to mow immediately after application because the majority of the better fungicides are systemic, so a good 24-hour drying period is necessary. He prefers a good four to six hours with no irrigation.

Several fungicide manufacturers offer information on their Web sites that provide a history of diseases and maps to show LCOs what is prevalent in their region. These sites also track the current year’s outbreaks.

FUNGICIDE SERVICES. According to lawn care operators, there are two categories of customers who want fungicide services – those who want completely disease-free properties and will do anything for them and those who will pay for a couple of fungicide treatments to try to prevent disease problems from occurring. “For us, it’s about a 70/30 split where 30 percent of the people who use fungicides say, ‘I don’t want to see diseases at all,’” Heltemes explains. “The remaining 70 percent take from one to four treatments to minimize diseases but stay within their budgets.”

Kollenkark agrees, pointing to the higher cost of fungicides as the reason some customers limit the number of curative treatments they receive, making preventive applications much more attractive. “The people who take the fungicide service are either ones who have a chronic history of disease on their lawns in the past and don’t want the problem to become serious or they want to go on a preventive program,” he says, adding that his company will treat 167 lawns for summer diseases and another 25 for winter diseases this year. “About 30 out of our 2,600 customers go on a preventive program, but I think it’s going to be more this year. We made about 700 applications last year for disease control, and that represented probably about 300 customers.”

Fungicides are typically about six times more expensive than herbicides, according to LCOs. Compared to insecticides, they could be twice as much depending on the insecticide. The price of the fungicide also varies depending on the focus of the product. According to fungicide manufacturers, some newer fungicides targeted specifically for the lawn care market are priced 33 to 50 percent lower than other fungicides.

Heltemes’ preventive services include five fungicide services per year. In order to maintain what would be considered a normal profit margin, he would have to charge three to three and a half times the normal application price, which is the equivalent of 15 more applications. “The competition has us down to double the application price for five applications. I’d love to get three or three and a half times, because that would be more in line with the type of margins we think about on herbicides, but you just can’t expect the homeowner to keep forking out that money.”

“We try to keep it simple for our customers,” Heltemes adds. “Not to confuse them, we make the application a multiple of their current application price.”

Kollenkark sees a slightly higher profit margin. “I’ll have an 80 percent profit margin with an herbicide and 65 percent profit margin with a fungicide,” he says.

DISEASE EDUCATION. It has become increasingly important for customers to understand that without fungicide treatments even the best LCO may not be able to save a lawn from disease. But Heltemes says customers are not knowledgeable about diseases or their effects on lawns, despite the annual mailer he sends to highlight common diseases and promote his fungicide services.

“We leave information sheets that talk about disease three times a year, and then when we see disease on a lawn during a regular fertilizer application, we leave another information sheet that talks about disease,” Heltemes says. “We heavily educate our customers.”

Weed Man Fresno also has a newsletter that it distributes to every customer. It includes information on the weed, insect and disease issues that customers are currently facing in the region. “We tell customers what to look for and how to manage their watering and why we’re doing what we’re doing with our applications,” Kollenkark says, adding that he disagrees with Heltemes and thinks customers are actually starting to understand and recognize diseases in lawns. “We also encourage them to call if anything looks suspicious, but most people are getting pretty good at identifying diseases now. We advise those who have a chronic problem to go on a preventive program for the year and this helps obtain better control.”