That fuzzy blanket of gunk left on Alaskans' yards after the snow recedes -- like someone slimed your yard with cobwebs -- is more than just the leftover ooze of winter.
It's called snow mold, a fungus that's harmless to humans but a scourge for golf courses and anyone chasing the perfect lawn.
The fungus occupies soil year-round but thrives as the temperature drops, especially when the host plants have exhausted their food reserves and become weaker and less resistant to disease, said Jenifer Huang McBeath, an expert on snow mold with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Add in the meltdown of spring breakup, when the host plants are saturated by water, and snow mold grows even more effectively because its enzymes can pass through plant tissue quickly.
Fortunately, the cobwebs are short lived, disappearing as temperatures warm. But let the fungus run rampant, and it can leave nasty bare patches on your yard.
Fighting it with fungicides is an annual ritual for golf courses, where the grass is fragile because it's cropped short and sees a lot of abuse.
"You can't really get rid of it, but we try to prevent it the best we can," said Wayne Phillips, an assistant superintendent at the Anchorage Golf Course.
That means using a different batch of fungicide each year -- so the mold doesn't have a chance to build up a resistance to the chemicals. With that treatment, the snow mold isn't really that bad, he said. "If we didn't spray for it, it'd be all over the golf course," he said.
McBeath said she invented a natural treatment 30 years ago that stops snow mold, after she isolated a microorganism in Alaska soil.
The stuff works as well as fungicides, she said, but she had no luck finding Alaska investors to market the product. So the compound, using a pure culture, is made by a California company that sells it as Plant Helper. Turns out it has other merits than protecting yards, including increasing potato production and helping ginseng plants thrive in Korea, she said.
Her invention hasn't made her rich, but McBeath isn't in it for the money. "To me, that's immaterial. I want to alleviate the environment from the adverse effect of chemical pesticides."
That's especially important in the Arctic, she said, because the cold means that chemicals degrade more slowly and also must be used in greater amounts to be effective. Pesticides can also have unwanted side-effects, killing organisms that shouldn't be killed.
"We are doing more harm than good," she said.
But does her product stop pesky dandelions, another scourge of lawn crews? No, she said, but it is all-natural. So if you use it to stop snow mold you can eat those dandelions, say in salads, without poisoning yourself.