Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the week of Aug. 3-10, 2001.
The hot hazy humid weather has been with us now most of this week and it is forecast to stay through the long weekend. There have been some isolated thunder showers moving through. Conditions have remained extremely dry and now many areas are down to about ¼ of the rainfall from last year. Non-irrigated turf remains dormant in most areas. For golf course turf there will be a chance of the summer diseases like Pythium blight and brown patch developing as well as anthracnose as long as the hot, humid temperatures remain. This is especially true when nighttime temperatures remain in the twenties. Dollar spot and take-all patch are also active right now. On home lawns that are being irrigated, necrotic ring spot and dollar spot are showing up now.
Japanese beetle adults flights have tapered off now. We are just outside the window now for Merit applications for Japanese beetle and European chafers grubs. There have been some severe outbreaks of June beetle grubs in the Barrie/Orillia/Horseshoe Valley area. The difficulty with June beetles at this time of year is that they are already very large. Merit will not be affective against the second/third instar grubs and it also is not labeled for June beetle grubs. The choices then are diazinon, and carbaryl. These two products are probably less effective than Merit. The bottom line is that these June beetle grubs might be difficult to control at this stage. For more information on grubs click here.
There have also been reports of bluegrass billbug damage in a few areas. There have been reports of black turfgrass ataenius damage on golf courses over the last two weeks and there has also been a lot of cutworm damage.
Hairy chinch bugs are still actively feeding in lawns right now. Because many of the lawns are dormant, we are not seeing the brown patches caused by chinch bug feeding. These adults will be feeding on dormant turf for the most part and we will probably run into a situation like we did in 1999. Come late August when the rains return, people will find that their grass is dead. For more information on hairy chinch bugs click here.
Crabgrass is doing well with all this heat. Acclaim Super can still be used, but you must have good coverage to get good control. It is not recommended for use if the turf and the crabgrass are under drought stress.
It is best to suspend all cultural practices and fertilizer applications until the rains return and turf comes out of dormancy. You may want to consider watering turf at this time with about 2-3 cm of water. In areas that have gone up to six weeks without rain, this will insure that the turf will survive this drought.
The Sports Turf Association is having their annual field day on Wed. August 15, 2001 at RIM Park in Waterloo. For more information contact Sports Turf Association at (519) 763-9431.
Again, thanks for phoning the Turf Agriphone for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Fri. Aug. 10 ,2001. – See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2001/turf-agrifax-week-17-2001-august-3-2001.html#sthash.YRzsLEYT.dpuf
