Fairy Ring in turf and lawns

Fairy Ring is a difficult disease to control for a number of reasons. Firstly it may or may not appear very year. It may or may not appear in the same place every year so planing for it is hard. As well it can appear anytime but we do know certain conditions will be more conducive to it. There are 3 types of fairy ring to deal with as well.:

Type 1 Fairy Ring

Type 1 fairy ring dead turf

Symptoms
Dead turf appears in a circular shape

What is happening?
Fairy ring does not infect the plant directly it works in the soil.
The fairy ring fungi (Basidiomycetes spp) attach to the soil and the soil and sand particles become severely hydrophobic.
The soil becomes difficult to re-wet and the plant cannot take up any water or nutrients and hence suffers from drought stress.

  • What conditions favour type 1 fairy ring?
  • Turf which is under low fertility and low mowing heights
  • Turf suffering from heat/drought/soil moisture stress
  • Extremes in wet/dry weather conditions favour fairy ring. Can occur anytime of the year
  • High thatch areas

Type 2 Fairy Ring

Type 2 fairy ring dark green rings

Symptoms
Dark green rings

What is happening?

  • Green rings appear due to increase nutrients of decomposition of organic matter or the fungi
  • Fairy ring is associated with the breakdown of organic matter and a build up of ammonia.
  • The bacteria normally converts the ammonia into a nitrate form

Hence you get the stimulated green ring commonly seen.

Type 3 Fairy Ring

Type 3 fairy ring mushrooms

Symptoms
Mushrooms have appeared from nowhere overnight. No dark rings only mushrooms in ring or arc formation.

What is happening?
Mushroom usually seen after heavy rainfall or irrigation. Many different types of mushroom species may pop up. Can turn into damaging type 1 or 2 fairy ring

Earlier on this year I conducted a podcast interview with Dr Mike Fidanza from Penn State. Mike is known worldwide as the fairy ring expert and runs the #friskyfairyringfriday Below I share some of his thoughts from the odcast

Mushrooms have appeared from nowhere overnight. No dark rings only mushrooms in ring or arc formation.

What is happening?
Mushroom usually seen after heavy rainfall or irrigation. Many different types of mushroom species may pop up. Can turn into damaging type 1 or 2 fairy ring


Earlier on at the US turf conference I sat down and did a podcast with Dr Mike Fidanza the fairy ring guru as he is known world wide. Below are Mike’s thoughts on fairy ring and gives a great insight into the disease. you can listen to the full podcast here


There are three types of fairy ring symptoms. Type three of the mushrooms, the fruiting bodies, the puffballs, toadstools. Type two are the dark green, stimulated rings or semi circles or arcs. And type one are the democratic zone the one we fear the most. And with those in the crowded zones and the crowded rings and arcs and circles, we get very hydrophobic root zones, hydrophobic soils, that result … These hydrophobic is as a result of the fairy ring fungus, colonizing the soil and the roots and the root zone causing this water repellents soils or hydrophobic soils, thus the turf ends up dying because of lack of moisture, lack of available water.

So fairy ring disease of turf, it’s an indirect infection of the turf grass system. Anyway, no one wants to putt on dead turf. So fairy ring is very complicated that way and it can occur all year long, anytime of the year, during any season, depending on where you are globally. But I think overall, fairy ring is more severe when there’s heat stress and drought stress and times when your turf is under greatest stress due to environmental conditions, abiotic stress is due to poor fertility or low fertility due to lower than desired knowing heights that our golf has desire, but it’s creates additional stress on the turf. So as a result, these fairy ring symptoms appear and when they appears as you know it’s very difficult to just apply something and get curative results overnight. Flutolanil is one of the first fungicides that was actually labeled for fairy ring. And it has become and it is still is a standard for which all the fungicides are measured.

I hope this posts helps you understand fairy ring a little more. I do have some more information on fairy ring and Monstar on our website here

Don’t forget to search for #friskyfairyringfriday and follow Mike on twitter @MikeFidanza