Turf Agrifax – Week 2, 2001 ( April 20th, 2001 )

Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for the year 2001. This message is being recorded for the week of April13-20, 2001. This service will continue until mid-late September and the message 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.

Well, the grass has very quickly greened up in the Guelph area. I am sure this is the case throughout the southwestern part of the province. It was amazing how the one day of nice temperatures last Sunday caused the grass to green-up virtually overnight. Many golf courses opened last weekend with is about an average opening day. One advantage this year as that soils have dried up quickly. Soils have been draining well and we haven’t had the standing water that we get some springs.

As far as the snow mould goes, A light raking or verticutting will help the snow mould scars dry out. Mowing will take off a lot of the dead leaf tissue. A very light nitrogen application will also help heal the snow mould scars. The Fusarium patch phase of pink snow mould will continue to be active for a long time yet, if we get cool wet weather. It may be wise to apply a fungicide application to keep the Fusarium patch in check this spring.

Now that the turf is green the voles damage has become very evident. These vegetarian rodents chew the grass blades down to the crowns during the winter under the snow. To help the runways fill in, rake the areas to remove the dead grass blades and put down a light application of fertilizer now.

Spring grub calls have started, but in general there are far fewer calls this year than there have been in the two previous years. It is the same however, as with other springs, in that the problem is not the grubs themselves, but the raccoons, skunks and starlings that have been pulling up the turf in search of grubs. 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.

As the temperatures quickly warm up, we are starting to see the forsythia blooming in some areas now. This is the signal that crabgrass will be germinating soon. It is time to think about those spring preventative crabgrass applications. We only recommend using these products in areas with a history of crabgrass. Remember not to apply these crabgrass products to lawns that have been reseeded because the products will prevent weed seeds from germinating, but they will also prevent grass seed from germinating.

Again, thanks for phoning the turf agriphone for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Fri. April 20.