Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the week of Sept. 9 – 16, 2005.
Weather
The five day forecast is for incredible Indian summer type weather with highs around 26-28ºC and lows in the 15-18ºC range. There will be some cloud cover but very little chance of rain. After that there are some cool weather in the 14 day forecast with highs in the low teens on some of the days.
Diseases
The main disease that is active right now is rust. It is a bit later than usual. Rust is a nuisance disease. The cultural practices that will help keep rust in check are mowing and fertilizing. There continues to be a lot of dollar spot out there. This year could easily be a year where dollar spot is much more of a fall problem than a summer problem. For much of the summer it was too hot for dollar spot to develop.
The recent rains have lessened the symptoms from necrotic ring spot and take-all patch over the last week. There is no sign of Fusarium patch activity yet, and with the warm temperatures in the forecast it is likely that we will see this disease for a week or two.
Although it isn’t a disease problem, localized dry spots continue to be an issue and these will increase over the next week with the dry weather that is in the forecast.
Insects
There are lots of European crane fly adults flying at the moment. On golf greens that are infested with leatherjackets, you can see the pupal cases lying on the surface of the greens at the moment. The adults mate very soon after emerging and the females will then lay their eggs in the surrounding turf. Neither the males or the females are very strong flyers. The eggs will probably hatch in 11-17 days. I expect that the peak flights will be next week in the Guelph area. This will vary a bit, with areas such as Hamilton being slightly later. Control products should probably be applied once all the eggs have hatched which is by mid-October. There are no products currently registered for use on leatherjackets on home lawns in Ontario. For golf courses there are two products, Sevin T&O and Dursban. Sod farms that have this insect can use Dursban. See the related links below for more information.
The sod webworm moths that were flying around a few weeks ago have developed into small caterpillars now. Sod webworm problems will be surfacing over the next week or two. The damage is usually noticed by mid-late September. The species that we have here in Ontario feeds at the thatch/turf interface and the turf can easily be lifted to reveal the caterpillars. A 4 liter solution of water with 15mls of dishwashing soap can also be use to monitor for them. Just pour this on to about a 0.1m2 area. A new biorationale product called Success is now registered for control of sod webworms.
Weeds
The temperatures that are forecast for next week are a bit warm for broadleaf herbicide treatments. Once we reach mid September and the temperatures cool down, that should be the ideal time.
Moss on golf greens continues to be an ever increasing problem and it will very quickly colonize those areas that have thinned out from all the stress this summer.
You still have time to scout areas for potential crabgrass treatment next spring. Crabgrass plants will keep growing until we get a hard frost.
Cultural Practices
Most golf courses have finished aerating greens at the moment and have moved on to aerating fairways. Many have also overseeded the thin areas on greens and temperatures are ideal now for seed germination. Don’t forget to keep those newly seeded areas moist.
The first application of the fall fertilizer should be on by now. The second application should be timed for roughly late October to the beginning of November and the rates for both applications should be roughly .5kg of N/100m2.
Thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Fri. Sept. 16, 2005.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2005/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-september-9-2005.html#sthash.E6JuSfUh.dpuf
