Welcome back to the “Turf Hotline” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for the year 2001. This message is being recorded for the week of April 6 – 13, 2001. This service will continue until mid-late September and the messages will be updated weekly on Fri. mornings. For those of you who are interested in either a fax or an e-mail copy of this message, you can order the service by calling 1-888-466-2372 or you can obtain an order form from the OMAFRA web site at: www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/products/agrifax.html.
As everyone is well aware, we had a lot of snow and it lasted a long time this winter. The result is a lot of grey and pink snow mould damage. To add to this snow mould pressure, many golf course superintendents did not get a chance to put down their preventative snow mould applications because the snow came early and it never went away. Often the snow mould damage is superficial, affecting only the leaves of the turf plants. Occasionally, the damage does reach the crowns of the plants. To get a jump on this situation of assessing the degree of damage, you can bring a plug of turf that has snow mould on it indoors. Place near a window and keep it moist. If the plug greens up within 3-5 days, the damage is superficial. If the plug fails to green up and resume growth, it means that there is some crown damage. This same technique can be used for winterkill. For home lawns with snow mould damage, it is best to rake the areas to encourage drying and to apply a light fertilizer application to speed recovery.
Voles are another one of the pests which usually cause nuisance damage during the winter. Again, because of the long duration of snow cover there has been considerable damage from voles. To help the runways fill in, put down a light application of fertilizer in a week or two.
One pest that is rearing its ugly head again this spring is the European chafer grub. Grubs are up near the soil surface now. With some of the warmer nights where there isn’t frost in the ground, the raccoons and skunks have been foraging for the grubs. Starlings and other birds have also been pulling out tufts of grass in search of grubs. Overall, the incidence of grubs is down from the past two or three springs. This does, however, bring me to the topic of spring grub control. The traditional product that we have used for grub control, diazinon, is not recommended for use on grubs in the spring. The grubs are very large, which makes them much less susceptible to the insecticides. They are not feeding much and they are relatively inactive at this time of year. Two things that are needed for insecticides to work are the grubs need to feeding or moving around a lot in the soil to insure that they get good exposure to the insecticides. The manufacturers of Sevin XLR Plus claim that their product works well in the spring. It might, but still the recommended time for treatment is late summer, early fall. The other product Merit, which is also registered for grubs is definitely not active against grubs in the spring. The timing for grub control with Merit is June or July. It would be wise to make note of customers or areas that have grub problems this spring and target them for a Merit application in the summer.
At this point in the spring, it is best to rake up areas where grub damage has occurred and re-seed the areas a bit later in the spring. Sodding the damaged areas is also an option, but the sod growers have not started harvesting sod yet in this area. We are a week or two away from having sod available.
Again, thanks for tuning in to the hotline message for this week. The next hotline message will be recorded on Fri. April 13.
This document has not yet been authored.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2001/-turf-agrifax-week-1-2001-april-19th-2001.html#sthash.att1t3Hz.dpuf
