A question often asked here is how do I stop my dog from ruining my lawn, you don't, by any chance, have a dog of your own, in particular female dogs are the worst offenders?

"large brown swathes"? with growth either side? Any sign of toadstools or fungus? Any chance of a photograph

Hi,

thanks for your quick responses!

Ian digs v2 - don't have a dog but will bear in mind as pressue is building to get one!

Bamboo - i have just been out and there are indeed some toadstools starting to appear which have not been there before. Sounds like you might have an idea what it could be???

Dogs urinating on your lawn are terrible for doing damage. Don't think you can't have a dog AND a nice lawn but you will have to either walk your dog regularly or build a run somewhere else for your dog to use.

A photograph would be really useful here in order to determine whether you have a grade 2 fairy ring, fusarium patch disease, red thread, plus a couple of other conditions, or one much more serious problem, grade 1 fairy ring - if its this, there should be two darker green rings with a gap between them which is dead, dying, bare/moss ridden, with toadstools growing in the outer ring. The rings can be very large, or quite small. On the other hand, you could just have a mowing induced problem with coincidental toadstools, which often appear at this time of year on people's lawns, and are not necessarily related to fairy rings at all.

thanks again - have uploaded a couple of photos on my homepage www.growsonyou.com/enthusiasticamateur. They're not the best quality but you can see the toadstools and the patches - no pattern of rings at all.

okay, luckily, its not what I thought it might be, now I've seen the pics. However, it looks to me like a turf problem, or a laying problem - I can see the shape of the turves still, and it even looks possible to lift out the turf on display in its entirety and replace it - looks almost as if contact with the soil is poor, or there's debris or something underneath it. If you paid a contractor to lay that turf, I'd be getting him back to see what he says. The random toadstools aren't particularly significant, may have been present in the turf when it was laid as mycelium. If the contact between turf and soil (or turf and debris!) was poor, the amount of snow and frost this last winter could cause this trouble, but as you say, the pics aren't great, not very clear (mobile phone camera?). If your contractor isn't available, I'd cut out the affected turves, since you can see their edges so clearly, and see what's underneath in terms of soil conditions, etc., improve it if necessary, relevel and insert new turves.