Past weather and the forecast for the upcoming week
We have had pretty nice weather over the last week. It was actually starting to get a bit dry and then we got a good soaking of rain on Monday, June 21 and some pretty wicked thunder storms moving through on Wed. June 23, not to mention an earthquake. Temperatures have been pretty hot and sticky during the day, but it is cooling off most nights. I think that is keeping some of the hot weather foliar diseases such as Pythium blight and brown patch in check.
The forecast for the upcoming week is for a cooler front to come in to blast away the humidity. This is accompanied by temperatures in the mid twenties and lows in the mid teens. This should fend off many of the hot weather turf diseases. The one exception in the current forecast is for Sun. which will have a humidex of 31.
Dollar spot continues to be very active with all of the rain we have been having. The usual suspects have been showing up in the GTI Turf Diagnostics Lab, take-all patch, Pythium root disfunction and Waitea patch. With the heat, rain, scalping, etc. there could also be some anthracnose basal rot starting soon. There is an excellent summary of anthracnose diseases of turf by a Richard Latin at Ohio State University at the link below. All this rain and heat is setting things up for summer patch, but so far no symptoms have been seen. Make sure you check which products are registered for us in Ontario by consulting theOMAFRA Publication 384, Recommendations for Turfgrass Management. Also, if you are encountering diseases that you can not diagnose, please send a sample to the GTI Turf Diagnostics. You can email them at diagnostics@guelphturfgrass.ca or telephone them at (519) 824-4120 x 58873.
New on the insect front this week are European chafer flights. They began roughly a week ago and were pretty much right on time. Flights have been heavy all week. I have spent roughly a half hour every night over the last week at dusk observing the adult emergence and flights. I really should get a life. I think people are surprised at how many adults are flying, but that is usually the situation in a wet year. The grubs were there, but there was very little turf damage.
Weed control
Conditions have been ideal for crabgrass germination with the heat and the rain. It will be interesting to see if corn gluten meal holds up in a year with large pressure from crabgrass. I would love to hear from lawn care operators who have applied Sarritor in late spring. Seems to me conditions were fairly good for it this spring, but have not heard any tales from the field. If there is anyone out there that would like to let me know how well their Sarritor applications are working, I would be glad to hear from you.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2010/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-june-23-2010.html#sthash.vJOAO9u4.dpuf
