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It's hard to believe that it was 50 episodes ago that we first introduced you to the lawn. 50! That's just, that's awesome.

And man have I learned a lot along the way. I started out not knowing a single thing about what it takes to do my own lawn care, and so that's what this whole series was about. Learning along with you what it takes to get a yard looking as good as mine does right now. Leaning on our customer service staff at Do My Own dot com, to help me out. It's been an amazing journey.

I will say, one of the biggest things that I've learned along this journey is it doesn't really take a whole lot of time to get your yard looking amazing. It's a bit of sweat equity, staying on top of the maintenance, doing all of the little tips and tricks that we've shared with you so far, and your yard within one season can look immaculate.

Back here in the back is a prime example of what I'm talking about. This use to be just bare dirt, moss, weeds, it was terrible. Matter of fact, here's a clip!

But after a bit of work and some effort, I've got some really good fescue growing in back here and it's looking really really good.

It's still not perfect back here but overall, I'm really happy with where I'm at and it's only going to get better the more work I put into it.

I really only have one big problem back here that I'm facing that I know a lot of you are as well, because I've seen the comments roll through on our other videos, I'm hearing the customer service staff take phone calls about it, and it's one that I want to address before we get into today's topic, Poa Annua!

I've got a lot of it going on back here in the back, matter of fact this is where most of it's at. I've got some going on in the front, but like I said, this is a majority of it right here.

The thing you have to understand about Poa Annua is that it is a cool season weed and it cannot take temperatures consistently above the 80s. Here's a really good example of what I'm talking about, a lot of this Poa Annua right here is starting to yellow and wilt away because of those high 80 temps that we're starting to get into.

So on it's own, it's going to start choking and dying off during the hot summer months, but if you just absolutely cannot stand the site of it, I'll leave a link to the products in the description box below so you can click over to Do My Own dot com and check those out.

So, let's dive into talking about fungicides some more, and I say some more because we already made a video on how to use fungicides, I'll link that in the description box as well.

But for this video, we want to dive a little bit deeper into the topic of fungicides and more specifically talk about fungicide rotation. And to get into that topic, I want to first talk about curative versus prevention.

Now if you're going the curative route with a fungicide, it's a lot more work because the damage is already done. If you are going to go the curative route, what you have to understand is you're mainly stopping the fungus or disease dead in it's tracks. And most likely, you're going to have to go at a higher rate depending on the product that you choose.

And on the other side of that, prevention. And it's true what they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is the route that we recommend that you go. You want to try and stop the problem before it happens. And a great example of this is my fescue in my back yard. I have a cool season grass in a warm season zone, so I'm bound to have problems.

Now thank goodness I don't have a problem right now, but as soon as summer rolls in and it starts to get much hotter like it does here in the south, that summer heat is really going to stress out this cool season turf type tall fescue. And once it starts to get stressed out, that's when problems creep in; all the more reason to jump on it now and put down a preventative application of fungicides.

Once you've started a fungicide program, it's really important that you rotate what you use so that you can prevent resistance. Now how do you rotate? You're going to base this off of the class that the fungicide is, or the FRAC code that's on it.

So right here's a good example of what I'm talking about. Either on the bottle or somewhere on the label you're going to see group, class, FRAC Code, or maybe even just code and then the number. So this is a group three or class three, FRAC code three, whatever you want to call it, they're calling it a group three fungicide. And then, so, this is what I'm going to start my program on and then I'm going to jump over here to this one which is a group 11 or a class 11 fungicide.

Now FRAC code, F.R.A.C, Frac code, what is that? Frac, F.R.A.C stands for fungicide resistance action committee and what they do is they work to prolong the effectiveness of fungicides. It's a way to group together the active ingredients which demonstrate potential for cross resistance. So using two different fungicides with the same class number or FRAC code, not advisable, hence the need for rotating the products.

Now as for the actual fungicide rotation program that you need to setup, it's all going to depend on the type of turf that you have. So, as with everything, the very first and most important thing that you need to do is know what type of grass you have on your property.

It's also going to vary depending on how often you have to apply the product that you choose which is why it's so important to read the label which you've chosen the product for your particular turf.

Now for my turf type tall fescue here in the back, my rotation program is going to look like this. I'm going to start off with a class three fungicide, make an application, wait 14 days, make a second application with that class three fungicide, and then I'm going to wait another 14 days and rotate to a different class number, in my case it's going to be a class 11.

With that class 11 fungicide, I'm going to make one application, wait 14 days, make a second application, wait another 14 days and then rotate back to my class three fungicide and make one final application with that. I do that, I should be good to go.

So without further ado, let's get to mixing and spraying.

I wonder, how many times can I show myself mixing up product before y'all are just bored out of your mind and over it?

Ok so for my first fungicide, the class three that I'm going to be using, it says that I need one to two ounces, per thousand square feet, for brown patch in turf type tall fescue. And it also says that I need to begin applications in May or June before the disease is present and repeat every 14 to 21 days. So I've got just over 4,000 square feet that I'm dealing with back there where all my fescue is at, so I'm just going to keep it simple and just go at one ounce per gallon, per thousand square feet. So I just need four ounces, in my four gallon backpack sprayer, and this should take care of it.

Flip of the switch, pumped up, ready to go! I'm so glad that I ditched the hand pump sprayer and went with a battery sprayer.

I also wonder how many times I can get away with doing these spraying montages, so, I, I don't know! I guess time will tell, huh?

Let's not talk about this little patch right here.

Right here's another really good example of the Poa Annua dying off like what I was talking about. You can really see it yellowing on the side right here and it's just turning really really light green compared to the rest of the fescue that's in the yard. Matter of fact here's a pocket of Poa Annua. Right there. Right there. So, it's starting to die off all on it's own.

First application of fungicides is done. I'm going to make sure I note this on my calendar, mark today when I made this application, count 14 days out and that's when I'll do my second application.

So the biggest take away here is number one, prevention, prevention, prevention! Do these applications to prevent the problem from happening in the first place. And number two, rotate the fungicides that you're going to use in your yard. Again, for example, in the turf type tall fescue in the back here, I'm using a class three for my first two applications, I'll use a class 11 for my next two applications, then I'll rotate back to the class three.

And like I mentioned at the beginning of this video, if you want to know more about the products that I just used for this video, I'll leave the link in the description box below so you can click over to Do My Own dot com and read more about those.

I hope that was helpful and wasn't too confusing and you followed along. If you have any other questions on what we touched on in this video, feel free to leave the in the comments section below and we'll do our best to get to those.

Or you can email those over to the customer service staff, or even better, pick up the phone, give them a call.

So that's it for this one. I still can't believe it's episode number 50. That's just, that's, that's awesome! We hope you'll continue to follow along with us. If you're not already, click this button right to subscribe to the channel, you can click this playlist to see all the videos in the Do My Own Lawn Care series, and click this playlist to see all the videos in the Do My Own Gardening series.

And as always, thanks for watching!