Welcome to the “Turf Management Updates” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is for the week of Aug. 2-9, 2007.
Weather
I guess where turf is concerned, brown is the new green. There has basically been no improvement in the water situation over the past week. Many watersheds have from 20-40% of the normal rainfall. Many have issues level 1 low water level alerts which calls for a 10% voluntary reduction of water taking for large water users such as golf courses. Some have moved to a level 2 low level water alert which calls for a 20% voluntary reduction in water taking. Many municipal sports fields are dormant and the traffic on them when they are dormant can cause damage to the turf stand. It has been difficult for sod farmers because they need to irrigate the fields that they plan to harvest. Some of the creeks that they rely on for water are drying up. Another problem during a season like this when turf has to rely on irrigation water as its only source of water, this is when poor quality irrigation water can take its toll on your turf. It may be a good idea to have your irrigation water tested at this point to determine if there are any problems.
Diseases
There is a lot of poor looking turf on golf greens for many reasons at the moment. The root pathogens, summer patch and take-all patch have been very active and usually there is anthracnose mixed in there as a secondary pest. Basal rot anthracnose has also been a big problem. This very high heat has slowed dollar spot down a bit, but it is one of those diseases that thrives when soil moisture is low and relative humidity is high. In areas that are over-irrigated or if a thunderstorm goes through, there may be risk of brown patch or Pythium blight developing. The GTI Turf Diagnostics is ready and waiting to help you diagnose your turf problems.
Insects
There are lots of hairy chinch bugs out now. This is the ideal time in most areas to be treating for them. It will be tricky on dormant lawns to detect any damage, so scouting for this pest becomes more important than ever. On irrigated home lawns, chinch bug damage is starting to show up now, even though they are generally less of a problem on irrigated turf. I have found a lot of adult bluegrass billbugs during routine monitoring. The bluegrass billbug damage has gone undetected because lawns are dormant. The down side of this is that when we do get rain, these damaged areas will not green up.
There still continue to be Japanese beetle adults flying around and these could potentially be around and feeding until mid-August. Unfortunately, if you are concerned about turf damage from Japanese beetle grubs we have pretty much come to the end of the window when treatment with Merit is recommended. If you are concerned about the feeding damage to ornamental plants there is information on the Nursery and Landscape Report. See the link below. I did get a phone call from a lawn care operator who was finding mature grubs at the moment. I have asked for a sample to see if they may be June beetle grubs. If not, there are some pretty late maturing European chafer grubs out there. I will let you know the verdict next week after I receive the grub sample.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2007/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-august-2-2007.html#sthash.dj2UpPV8.dpuf
