Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the week of June 23-30, 2006.
Diseases
Things have still been pretty dry in many areas of southwestern Ontario. Any rain that has fallen in the last week has been due to thundershowers which have been spotty. There is some rain in the forecast for mid-week next week. Let’s hope that it materializes. Many non-irrigated turf areas are dormant at the moment, especially on light textured soils. Temperatures are going to be on the cool side with highs around 20-25ºC. There was some summer patch diagnosed this week in the GTI Turf Diagnostics and some take-all patch. If you had problems with summer patch in the past, it would be advisable to pay close attention to your irrigation management and avoid over-irrigating. Wet soil conditions really promote the growth and spread of this disease. There will probably be more dollar spot activity over the next week and it is possible that we will start to see anthracnose symptoms showing up any day now. One big problem over the last week has been localized dry spots. Between the heat, the windy conditions and irrigation systems with poor coverage, it is very difficult to keep turf wet. If you do have disease samples that you want diagnosed, you can send them to the GTI Turf Diagnostics. Information on this service is available at www.uoguelph.ca/GTI/turf_diag
Insects
European chafer adult flights began this week in the Guelph area. As usual, you can observe them at dusk popping out of the grass and mating in near by trees. 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. There have been a few calls about annual bluegrass weevil damage and lots of calls about cutworm damage from golf courses.
I have had a few more inquires this week about controlling turfgrass ants. They can usually be found just at the perimeter of a sand based golf green. There are three products labeled for ant control, Dursban T, Sevin T&O and Demand. Demand is a new turf insecticide registered for use on ants only. Read labels carefully for application rates and other application instructions.
We probably have another narrow window where broadleaf herbicides can be applied as long as the turf and weeds aren’t under drought stress. At this point it is best to switch to Acclaim Super for post emergence crabgrass control.
Again, thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Friday June 30.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-june-23-2006.html#sthash.MjAfjlQ7.dpuf
