Welcome to the “Turf Hotline” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for the year 2000. This message is being recorded for the week of April 7 – April 14. 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 my office at (519) 824-4120 x 2597 or you can obtain an order form from the OMAFRA web site at: www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/products/agrifax.html.
Just when we thought that winter was over, it rears its ugly head again. The forecast for the upcoming weekend is 15 cm of snow in the Guelph area. That will put the brakes on a bit. It will mean that we will probably have a bit of a flare up of Fusarium patch on golf courses in the upcoming weeks.
As far as grubs are concerned the snow will slow them down somewhat and they may actually move a bit deeper into the soil if the cold temperatures persist. As soon as things do warm up again, the raccoons and skunks will be foraging for the grubs again. Starlings and other birds will also be busy pulling out tufts of grass in search of grubs. I am going to reiterate my song and dance about spring grub control for those of you who did not phone the hotline last week. The traditional products that we have used for grub control, diazinon and chlorpyrifos are 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. This is the first year that Sevin has been labeled for use on grubs so there is no proven track record yet. The other product Merit, which is also registered for grubs is definitely not active against grubs in the spring. With Merit the grubs should be targeted in the months of June and July.
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, usually May is best. Sodding the damaged areas is also an option, but the snow will have shut down any sod harvesting that may have begun earlier.
Forsythia shrubs are blooming in the Windsor/Sarnia area and they are just starting to show some colour here in Guelph. This means that you should be thinking about pre-emergence crabgrass control. Of course we are still several weeks to a month away from the time that crabgrass will germinate. It requires soil temperatures to be 15°C and air temperatures to reach 18°C for five consecutive days. We are by no means near that yet. The pre-emergence products do stay active in the soil for a long time so putting the products on early is ok. Still, there is no need to panic and we do have a fairly large window where these products can still be applied.
Early spring fertilization is not necessary for turf that received a late fall application of fertilizer. In this case you will not need to fertilize until mid-late May. We do not recommend heavy doses of fertilizer in the early spring. This promotes a flush of shoot growth at a time when turf should be concentrating on producing roots.
The 2000 edition of Turfgrass Management Recommendations put out by the Ministry is now available. It has all the new pesticide recommendations in it as well as information on turfgrass fertilization, turf species, seed companies, etc.. To order your 2000 edition of Publication 384 you can telephone the OMAFRA head office at 1-888-466-2372 or call the GTI at (519) 767-5009.
Again, thanks for tuning in to the hotline message for this week. The next hotline message will be recorded on Fri. April 14.
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