Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the week of June 2- 9, 2006.
The small taste of summer seems to be over for the moment. The forecast over the next two week period is for cooler roller coaster weather. The high’s are forecast to be around 25ºC in the day time and lows as low as high single digits.
Disease
Dollar spot showed up right on time last week. In the Guelph area it was on Tues. morning. The weather in the forecast will favour more dollar spot development. If you haven’t put down a fungicide for dollar spot control, it would be advisable to do so. There are still some lingering Fusarium patch scars that are healing up nicely. This disease could flare up again over the next week because of the cooler weather in the forecast. There was some nice red thread this morning and there could be more red thread developing over the next two weeks. The GTI Turf Diagnostic lab has been busy this week. There was a sample of active Pythium blight from a golf course fairway. There was also a sample with Rhizoctonia mycelium. Because of the crazy up and down weather we have had it is difficult to say. It could have been yellow patch or brown patch. There have been more samples of take-all patch submitted to the GTI Turf Diagnostics this week. The Pythium blight activity should cease with the cooler temperatures. If you do have disease samples that you want diagnosed, you can send them to the GTI Turf Diagnostics. Information on this service is available at www.uoguelph.ca/GTI/turf_diag
Insects
We are coming to the end of the main feeding period for leatherjackets. The only damage that you are likely to see now is from birds pecking them out of turf. During the week we saw turfgrass scale adults on the terminal ends of grass blades in our Kentucky bluegrass stands here at GTI. I have never actually seen them do this. I thought that they stayed pretty close to the crown of the bluegrass plants. These adults will be laying their eggs soon in the thatch and the next generation of turfgrass scale crawlers will emerge around Canada Day.
My field crop colleagues are finding cutworms in corn fields at the moment, so we can expect to see them in turf as well. A soap flush with 4 litres of water and 15-30 mL of dish washing liquid can be applied to 0.1m2 of turf to see if you have cutworms in your greens.
Most of the flights of the overwintering insects such as black turfgrass ataenius, annual bluegrass weevils and hairy chinch bug are slowing down or are finished at the moment. It will could be a week or so before we start to see some annual bluegrass weevil damage. We are several weeks away from the window where ataenius will be causing damage. Hairy chinch bug damage does not start to occur for at least a month to six weeks. European chafer grubs are pupating at the moment and adult flights will begin in a couple of weeks.
The turfgrass ant has reared its ugly head. Ant mounds started to become a problem on greens about two weeks ago and the number of mounds has increased very rapidly over that time. They can usually be found just at the perimeter of a sand based golf green. There are three products labeled for ant control, Dursban T, Sevin T&O and Demand. Demand is a new turf insecticide registered for use on ants only. Read labels carefully for application rates and other application instructions.
Weeds
We are now in the ideal window for broadleaf herbicide applications, especially since the temperatures have gotten cooler. The ideal time for dandelion control is when they are in the puffball stage. There has been a real flush of crabgrass germination last week with the hot weather. It is still at the 2-4 leaf stage and can still be controlled with Dimension.
Annual bluegrass seedhead formation is probably at 75-100 % at the moment and many golf greens are looking pretty ratty because of this. There are reports too that many superintendents have noticed an increase in annual bluegrass this spring. This could be because of the tough growing conditions for creeping bentgrass last summer as well as the crazy spring weather this spring.
Turf that hasn’t been fertilized yet this season should receive some fertilizer in the next week. It is also good to fertilize after a herbicide treatment so that the turf can fill in the voids where the dead weeds are. With all the rain, turf is definitely looking like it could use a shot of nitrogen at the moment.
Again, thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Friday June 9.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-june-2-2006.html#sthash.8KWDtGnh.dpuf
