Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the week of July 14 – 21, 2006.
Diseases
My impression from watching the weather channel is that most areas of southwestern Ontario received a good dose of rain this week. Most areas are reporting 40-60 mm of rain. It could not have come at a better time. Non-irrigated turf was going dormant, especially on light textured soils. Non-irrigated golf course roughs were burning out from the combination of drought and cart traffic. The bad thing about the rain is that a lot of soils are saturated and when you combine this with the heat that we are getting now and through the weekend it is a recipe of many summer diseases. More bad news is that this heat and humidity is supposed to last for a week and there are also thundershowers in the forecast which will even intensify the disease pressure and further saturate the soils.
Summer patch occurs during hot, wet weather on annual bluegrass, especially if it is growing on poorly drained soils. If you do have heavier textured soils and you haven’t treated preventatively, you might see some summer patch developing now. There have been many reports of brown patch on greens and tees over the last couple of days and brown patch will continue to develop over the next week as well. If you have had problems with brown patch in the past it is probably a good idea to be treated for it now. The conditions will also be perfect for the development of Pythium blight. The symptoms of Pythium blight include dark, water soaked patches that feel oily to the touch. If humidity is high at night the collapse tissue can be covered with fluffy, white mycelium. Avoid mowing when turf is wet to limit the spread of the disease should it develop. Also, keep an eye out not to overwater turf as long periods of leaf wetness and high relative humidity are needed for this disease to develop. Again, conditions over the next week will be perfect for Pythium blight development so it is a good idea to apply a preventative fungicide application for Pythium blight.
It has been a bit confusing over the last couple of mornings because there has been a ton of dollar spot mycelium. Some of this has been misdiagnosed as Pythium blight. With the temperature as high as it is now, the dollar spot will probably taper off and the other summer diseases will flare up. If you get disease developing and you aren’t sure what you have you can send samples that you want diagnosed to the GTI Turf Diagnostics. Information on this service is available at www.uoguelph.ca/GTI/turf_diag
Insects
European chafer adult flights are slowly tapering off now in the Guelph area and they should be finished in the Windsor area. Japanese beetle adults are out now all the areas that they are a problem in. Applications of Merit in areas which had grub damage last fall or this spring can go down anytime now. Be sure to water Merit in within 24 hours. For lawn care operators in the City of Toronto there is information posted on their web site about the use of Merit. See the related links below.
Hairy chinch bug nymphs are growing rapidly in this heat. Damage is just starting to show up in some areas now. Now is definitely a good time to be monitoring for them and to treat if high populations are found. Still lots of sod webworm adults flying around. This makes me think that we may see a lot of damage from the caterpillars in mid-late September.
One sample came in to the GTI Diagnostics with pretty small annual bluegrass weevils. I think though that in most places the damage has peaked. I have had a couple of calls as well reporting black turfgrass ataenius damage. This should be pretty much peaking as we have seen a lot of adults flying around now. There are also reports now of bluegrass billbug injury on Kentucky bluegrass home lawns
GTI Turf Research Field Day
Mark your calendars for the GTI Turf Research Field Day on Thurs. Aug. 24th, 2006. This is a big year for us with two new turf faculty (Dr. Eric Lyons and Dr. Katerina Jordan) conducting research at the GTI site. There are also many product evaluation trials to see as well as moss control research, beet juice extract research to mention a few. It is definitely a must see if you are a turf manager. There is information about the field day on the GTI web site. See the related link below.
Again, thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Friday July 21, 2006.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-july-14-2006.html#sthash.7RPPiOZ9.dpuf
