Welcome back to the “Turf Management Report” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This is just a name change from the old “Turf Agriphone” messages. This message is being recorded for the week of April 13- 20, 2007. This service will continue until October and the messages will be updated weekly on Fri .afternoons. These messages are available in three forms now. You can listen to a recorded message by telephoning the local number 519-826-3414 or 1-888-290-4441. The reports are also available online at http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/updates/turfgrass/index.html. They are available as a written document and also as a podcast. The easiest way to get these weekly reports is to go to the subscribe/unsubscribe button at the Turf Management Report web site and subscribe. That way you will get an email and a link each time a new Turf Management Report is posted. If you are interested in subscribing to the podcast, simply click on the podcast button and follow the instructions.
Just a short recap of the winter weather of 2007, as you may remember, grass was still green and temperatures were mild up to Jan. 15, 2007. Snow and cold weather arrived soon after, but overall January was warmer than usual. This being said, January 2007 was colder than January 2006, which was the warmest on record. Because of the late start, the snowfall was lower than normal. The Great Lakes were not frozen, so there was lots of lake effect snow throughout January. Warm January weather was replaced by colder than normal February weather. I was in Ottawa on February 15, 2007 and the daytime high was -27ºC. The Rideau Canal, which is usually full of people had almost no one on it. March came in like a lion with a winter storm on March 1st, 2007 but by the last week in March, temperatures in southwestern Ontario had soared to 20ºC. Some golf courses actually opened the last week of March only to have everything grind to a halt by Easter weekend. And now April feels more like February than April. Things looked pretty wet at the beginning of April. Now except for low lying areas, things have dried out fairly well. Temperatures for the next two weeks are supposed to be well below normal (ranging from 3-8ºC) with no significant rain in the forecast. I know that I am going to keep my golf clubs in the basement until May.
As far as turf conditions coming into spring, things are looking very good. There was very little pink snow mould. It was mainly on areas where snow had drifted and hence took longer to melt. On home lawns, this damage is superficial and a light raking will help dry out the matted grass blades and encourage recovery. So far, I have seen only a few patches of gray snow mould. This makes sense, because we did not have a long period of continuous snow cover this winter, which is necessary for the development of gray snow mould. For the same reason there was very little vole damage to turf. So far the concensus out there is that most turf wintered well. Much of the turf went into winter green and came out of winter green. Hopefully, this last blast of winter has not caused any turf damage.
The GTI Turf Diagnostics is up and running again for the season. There have only been a few samples received so far and they have had anthracnose basal rot, Pythium root rot or take-all patch. Fusarium patch is another disease that is active right now. This is evidenced around the margins of pink snow mould scars and there are some new symptoms developing as small bronze coloured spots. Just a reminder to send any unknown turf problems to the GTI Turf Diagnostics. Information on this service is available at www.uoguelph.ca/GTI/turf_diag
It is too cold for most respectable turf insects to show their faces. Leatherjackets, which seem to be immune to the cold weather are up at the top of the soil feeding. At the moment, they are on average about 1-1.5 cm long. Traditionally, April and May are the months of heavy leatherjacket feeding. There is some good news for lawn care operators regarding leatherjacket control. Sevin T&O is now labeled to control leatherjackets on home lawns. There are several restrictions on when and how to use it on residential properties. These include: one application a year; treatment should be considered at or above 270 larvae per m2 and spot treatments only are allowed in residential areas and not more than 100 m2 area can be treated on a residential property. If you are finding significant number of leatherjackets they can be treated once temperatures warm up a bit.
On the subject of leatherjackets, I would like to do some research on thresholds for leatherjackets. To do this, I am looking for sites with leatherjacket damage that I can sample before treatment is made. If you have residential or golf course sites with damage, I would appreciate hearing from you and my summer student and I can come out and do some leatherjacket counts. If you are interested in cooperating on this leatherjacket threshold research please give me a call at (519) 824-4120 x 52597.
Also on the leatherjacket front, we are interested to find out if we have the common crane fly (Tipula oleracea) here in Ontario. It has been reported in British Columbia, New York State and Quebec. So far we have not confirmed if it is present in Ontario. It can be distinguished from the European crane fly by its life cycle. Adult common crane flies fly in April and May. If you are seeing some adult crane flies this spring, please let me know and I can arrange to get a sample from you.
Again, thanks for phoning the turf management report for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Fri. April 20, 2007.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2007/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-april-13-2007.html#sthash.VCvLqWfs.dpuf
