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.26 to Sept. 2, 2005.
Weather
Well, I think it is officially over, the period of turf stress that is. Looking at the 14 day forecast the temperature is going to cool to the mid to low 20’s during the day and down to some chilly low teens at night. There is rain in the forecast coming our way thanks to Hurricane Katrina.
Diseases
The official end of the summer diseases has come. Brown patch symptoms are recovering and the threat of Pythium blight is over now that we have cooler temperatures coming. The great relief is that it is cooling off now to the low teens at night. This is great for turf root recovery.
There has been a virtual explosion of dollar spot over the last week and this can be expected to continue throughout this week. We have seen it on our research greens and it is moving into surrounding areas of Kentucky bluegrass now. Other diseases of note over the last week are necrotic ring spot, take all patch and anthracnose.
The 2005 growing season has been the worst season for disease in a very long time. In my 14 years here at OMAFRA as the turfgrass specialist. I have never seen this much disease development in a single year. Of note is the summer patch. It usually is considered a fairly rare disease in these parts of southwestern Ontario. This was not the case this year.
Insects
I saw my first European crane fly adult today. I expect that the flights will really pick up over the next week with peak flights occurring roughly in two weeks time.
Hairy chinch bugs, annual bluegrass weevil and bluegrass billbugs will be moving to their overwintering sites now that the day and night time temperatures are cooling down. The second generation flights of adult black turfgrass ataenius have also slowed down now.
Weeds
Crabgrass is rampant still. The rain that we had in mid-late July and early Aug. has brought on an absolute explosion of crabgrass. The issue here is that turf had thinned in June and July because of the dry conditions. Add a bit of rain and heat and presto – you get crabgrass. Some of the pre-emergence crabgrass treatments that went on early may have run out of steam before the first real flush of crabgrass came on. Crabgrass germinated later than usual because it was so dry in June. Much of the crabgrass is getting too large to treat with Acclaim Super. Crabgrass can be scouted now for areas that will need treatment next spring with a product like Dimension. This fits nicely with IPM in that you can treat in the spring only those areas that had crabgrass this summer.
Broadleaf herbicide treatments should be postponed until after the winter annual weeds have germinated. The best time is in mid September. That way you can get a bigger bang for your herbicide buck.
Moss on golf greens continues to be an ever increasing problem and it will very quickly colonize those areas that have thinned out from all the stress this summer.
Cultural Practices
Now that the temperatures will be cooling down, it is a perfect time to open up those greens by aerating. If you are overseeding damaged areas, make sure to insure good seed to soil contact by either core aerating or verticutting. If you are overseeding damaged areas, make sure to keep the seedbed moist. This might take several light irrigation cycles a day on the sunny, dry windy days. It is also a good time to fertilize turf to help it recover from the summer and ready itself for winter.
Thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Fri. Sept. 2, 2005.
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