One of the symptoms of excess watering is...brown grass. Here is a picture of a neighborhood in Eastern PA. All the lawns are Kentucky bluegrass. One of the yards only waters once a week. The rest water every day.

Thanks to morpheuspa for posting this picture years ago.

There's not much you can do about Mother Nature's interference into your watering plan. Can you post a picture? That might help a diagnosis. Also tell us what kind of grass you have, how long you kept it during the summer, and whether you mowed it short all at one time or a little bit at a time.

I'll try to get a photo tomorrow. This is the same lawn we've had since we moved in 40+ years ago. Pretty sure it's not Kentucky Bluegrass, but I really don't know what it is. It has clover and dandelions and violets in it and I like it that way. We're not really focused on the lawn, as long as it looks acceptable. We cut it shorter in the spring at first, then start using the 2nd to the highest setting to mow going into summer. We kept it there all summer. Last week we cut it at the middle setting and this week we cut it at the 2nd to lowest setting, so down one more. We cut the front shorter than the back at the lowest setting this week.

I never thought that too much water could be an issue. Interesting. Well, I'll post a photo tomorrow and see what the possibilities are. Thanks.

It's a gray day out there, but I tried to get a close up of some areas and the long view. It's looked very green all season, but, I do notice some brown areas every year that are not all that noticeable. Nothing like this. I'm thinking maybe it's the way I managed the mowing and cut it so short and that it will grow back in green. Yes? No?

I don't normally take a lot of photos of the lawn, so this is the best I could do to show what it looked like earlier in the season. This is the same area earlier in the summer....

I guess this was in June, when the clover in the front lawn was blooming

Here's the edge of the front lawn probably back in May....

And..... it's going to rain tonight. lol I really can't complain, we never get this much rain and we've had more than the area around us as well. I measure rain. We have a really level lot. A lot of trees surrounding our lot in neighbor's yards that suck up the moisture. The tree canopies look better than I can ever remember seeing them. Mature Silver Maples - about 5 of them within 5-10 ft of our lot line. A line of Spruce - 5ft away from our fence - A mature Sycamore, A White Pine and 3 Norway Maples according to a tree person who gave us an estimate for some work this summer. Not trees we would have chosen but what we have.

We have loamy clay soil and normally I'm dragging the sprinkler around the yard and I've barely done that 1-2x the whole summer. I've had full rain barrels that I've not needed to use. 50+ inches of rain. We never have standing water. I get one long puddle in a small depression where all the back downspouts empty in a heavy rain, that is basically a mulched walkway that is very compacted and the water does collect there but quickly disappears once the rain stops. And there's no grass there.

I tried the screw driver. I didn't notice any noticeable difference the screw driver went in easily everywhere.

Passing the screwdriver test is good news. There was an outside chance your brown spots were trying to grow in harder soil, but apparently not. For whatever reason(s) I believe your brown spots are from the rain.

Well, that really is good news and not what I would have guessed. I've never had that problem. [g] A question I have is why is it that in England where it rains so much, everything is so green?

It may have a fungus called brown patch. The fungus loves a lot of moisture and humidity. I have it in my lawn in Virginia and use Scotts Disease X. The fungus only kills blades of grass, not the roots, so if you apply it, it should grow back.

The problem for me is I am an organic grower and would have to find a natural solution for it. Is there a way to tell if there is a fungal infection?

One natural solution for fungus IN ST AUGUSTINE is to use ordinary corn meal at a rate of 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. It has worked in my St Aug for nearly 20 years. However, folks with northern lawns have not reported much success with corn meal. You could try it and report back. One thing I have noticed is the corn meal seems to work better in the spring than in the fall, so that might be part of the problem in the north.