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 30-July 7, 2006.
The weather from last week has been very similar to the weather this week. Rainfall has come in the form of thundershowers and has been spotty. Some areas have received a lot of rain and some have received almost none. The humidity went down on Thursday after the thundershowers moved through, but it is climbing again for the long weekend. There is some rain in the forecast for next week. Temperatures are going to be hot for the Canada Day long weekend but will be milder next week with high’s in the low 20’s and lows in the mid-high teens.
Diseases
On the home lawn front there are many problems related to drought stress and the weather. Many non-irrigated turf areas are dormant at the moment, especially on light textured soils. On non-irrigated turf there is often damage from mower wheels when turf was mowed a week or so ago when temperatures were really high. On lawns that are being irrigated there has been a lot of melting out. This occurs when conditions are wet or if turf is irrigated, followed by high temperatures and humidity. For melting out it is a good idea to raise the mowing height and fertilize lightly to encourage the turf to recover. There are many new necrotic ring symptoms showing up now after the dry weather.
On golf course turf, conditions have been perfect for dollar spot with the more moderate temperatures and heavy dew formation, so you may see dollar spot outbreaks on fairways this week. There are some areas of the province that have received a lot of rain. If you have annual bluegrass on heavy textured soil greens and you have had a lot of rain during the hot weather last week, there is a good chance that you are starting to notice some summer patch symptoms. GTI Turf Diagnostics has diagnosed summer patch, take-all patch, localized dry spots and anthracnose this week. The anthracnose was foliar anthracnose and it was on turf that was very stressed, so it may have been secondary week and it is possible that we will start to see anthracnose basal rot symptoms showing up any day now. There was also a sample sent in of pearlwort. It is actually a broadleaf weed that can persist at very low mowing heights. It resembles annual bluegrass in its texture. It colonizes in patches and can appear as an off coloured patch on a golf green. It can only be successfully removed by plugging it out or by spot treating with glyphosate. 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
European chafer adult flights have been heavy all week. Expect this to continue for at least another week and then they will taper off. Flights usually peak about Canada Day. As usual, you can observe them at dusk popping out of the grass and mating in near by trees. Applications of Merit in areas which had grub damage last fall or this spring can go down anytime now. Be sure to water Merit in within 24 hours. I expect to see Japanese beetle flights starting in a week or two.
On home lawns we are seeing young chinch bug nymphs. This is also probably the weekend where you will see turfgrass scale crawlers on turf. They look like tiny red dots and they are most visible if you walk through turf with white shoes on at this time of year. For the past two weeks also, there have been lots of sod webworm adults flying around. Their populations build into the fall when the damage is usually seen.
There have been a few calls about annual bluegrass weevil damage. Calls about cutworm damage from golf courses have tapered off a bit this week.
Cultural Practices
If the cooler temperatures materialize next week, you might have a small window in which to do some core aeration, if you haven’t already done it. Also, irrigated turf could probably use another light application of nitrogen to get it through the summer.
Again, thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Friday July 7, 2006.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-june-30-2006.html#sthash.JtXlQSkJ.dpuf
