Welcome to the 8th edition of the “Turf Management Report” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for the week of July 13-23, 2010.
Past weather and the forecast for the upcoming week
The forecast for the upcoming week is for day time highs around 30ºC and lows around 20ºC. There are isolated showers for Thurs. and showers next Monday. This weather is highly conducive to foliar turf diseases as well as summer patch.
Over the last week, there has been active fluffy white dollar spot mycelium on the research greens at GTI pretty much every morning. Again, with the current temperatures and either night watering or thundershowers in the evening, we are setting up for the onset of the summer diseases such as brown patch and Pythium blight. I received a confirmation of Pythium blight on some golf courses in the Toronto area last week. I have also had brown patch reported from some areas in southwestern Ontario. Again, brown patch rarely causes damage to greens in Ontario, so there is rarely a need to apply fungicide preventatively for this disease. If you do have greens with a history of Pythium blight, it might be warranted to apply a preventative fungicide application on those areas that have had Pythium blight in the past. There have been samples coming into the Guelph Turf Diagnostics with summer patch and Waitea patch. If you were not on a preventative program for summer patch it is a bit hard to manage curatively.
European chafer adult flights are slowing down as Japanese beetle adult flights are ramping up. They will be flying for at least 2-3 more weeks. Japanese beetle seem to be on the move and infesting new areas each year. They were thought to be mainly a problem in Niagara and around the shores of Lake Erie, but they are now much more widespread than that. On golf courses, you can still apply a preventative application of one of the preventative products until the end of July for the control of both European chafer and Japanese beetle.
I have had some calls from the field about the beginning of hairy chinch bug damage. With the heat and dry conditions last week, hairy chinch bug damage was starting to show up. It is pretty frustrating because there really isn’t an efficacious control for chinch bugs at the moment. I would welcome calls and emails updating me on what you are seeing in the field regarding chinch bug damage.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2010/turfgrass-management-agriphone-july-14-2010.html#sthash.JtAWB1cx.dpuf
