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 28 – Aug. 4, 2006
The turf has really perked up over the last week to ten days with all the rain. I don’t recall seeing this much growth at this time of year in a long time. The current weather pattern of hot, hazy and humid is supposed to continue until Thurs. at which point we are going to get a respite from the heat. This means another week of high disease pressure.
Diseases
At the GTI Turf Diagnostics this week Katerina Jordan and Erica Gunn have diagnosed Summer patch and take-all patch. Anthracnose foliar blight has been found on some samples as well, but those samples also have either take all patch or summer patch as the primary disease and anthracnose has moved in to attack the dying leaf blades. Out in the field, dollar spot has been absolutely rampant and is even attacking Kentucky bluegrass now. This will be particularly evident on home lawns, roughs and fairways. Dollar spot symptoms on longer cut grass are roughly 4 cm diameter spots of bleached out leaf blades. Necrotic ring spot symptoms have declined a bit with all the rain.
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
This was another week with heavy Japanese beetle adult flights. Applications of Merit are to be applied in June and July, so we are quickly running out of time to make these applications. 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.
Insects
This has been another week of heavy feeding for hairy chinch bug nymphs. Lots of damage is visible now. The damage begins as fist sized depressed areas of dead grass. These are spreading very rapidly now to larger dead areas. Now is definitely a good time to be monitoring for them and to treat if high populations are found.
In our routine monitoring we have found high numbers of black turfgrass ataenius grubs. This is pretty late, but because the adults emerged late because of the cold spring the grub feeding has been delayed also.
Weeds
The crabgrass explosion continues. The hot weather means it is growing very rapidly now. Some of it can still be treated successfully with Dimension if it is at the 1-3 leaf stage. If it is larger than that, spot treatments with Acclaim will be the best control at this time.
The perennial ryegrass seed stalk problem that I mentioned last week is still persisting. All the turf growth and mowing is quickly making the seed stalks disappear.
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 Aug. 4th, 2006.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-july-28-2006.html#sthash.9LykP5sY.dpuf
