Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the week of May 26-June 2, 2006.
The weather forecast for the coming week is for much milder temperatures, with high’s into the high 20’s and lows around 15-17ºC. It is also supposed to be mainly sunny.
Diseases
The diseases that have been active over the last week are Fusarium patch (which is sometimes called Microdochium patch) and yellow patch. The yellow patch will clear up very quickly with the much warmer temperatures in the forecast. This is also the case with the Fusarium patch. Fusarium patch can be a bit tricky to diagnose this time of year. It is growing at a time of year where grass is being mowed frequently. The symptoms, because of the frequent mowing look very different from the Fusarium patch symptoms that we see early in the spring and late in the fall when there is no mowing going on. This time of year the patches are often smeared because the spores are spread by the mowers and they are not the distinct patches that we see at those other times of year when mowing isn’t occurring. The smeared patches are brown in colour and appear very bronze in colour when the turf is wet.
With the warmer temperatures in the forecast, we will probably start to see dollar spot soon. The phonological indicators that were identified by Dr. Brenda Nailor in her PhD research are just starting to flower in the Guelph area. These are iris and peony full bloom and full to late bloom of lilacs. Another disease that we might see over the next week or two is anthracnose basal rot. One thing to keep in mind with the anthracnose basal rot is that nitrogen applications of 1.0-1.5 kg of N/100m2 per season can greatly reduce the chances of developing anthracnose basal rot. One thing that I continue to see on golf course turf at the moment is localized dry spots. You would think that with all of this rain that would not be the case, however the localized dry spots are still lingering from the dry weather earlier in the spring. Once the turf gets hydrophobic, it is often almost impossible to re-wet with coring or using a wetting agent. 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
There have been a few more reports of leatherjackets damage showing up. Many golf courses have treated for this pest with good success. What often happens is that the superintendents have underestimated the leatherjacket populations. When they treat and the dead leatherjackets end up all over their greens and or tees it is often quite shocking how high the populations were.
I know that there is a lot of frustration in the lawn care sector because there are no products registered for leatherjacket control on home lawns. We are currently doing trials on new active ingredients as well as nematodes to determine their efficacy against leatherjackets. There is also a minor use label expansion request that has gone in to PMRA to add home lawn control of leatherjackets to the Sevin T&O label. I will keep you posted on these developments throughout the season.
Another insect that has been active over the last week is sod webworm. They have been found in golf greens over the last week. The damage is very similar to cutworm damage in that they seem to prefer to feed around aeration holes. A soap flush with 4 litres of water and 15-30 mL of dish washing liquid can be applied to 0.1m2 of turf to see if you have sod webworms in your greens.
Most of the flights of the overwintering insects such as black turfgrass ataenius, annual bluegrass weevils and hairy chinch bug are slowing down or are finished at the moment. It will be several weeks before we will start to see damage from the next generation of these insects.
Weeds
We are now in the ideal window for broadleaf herbicide applications. The ideal time for dandelion control is when they are in the puffball stage. I have had a call from the Hamilton/Ancaster area about the broadleaf weed garlic mustard. I am not sure how widespread it is. It seems to have moved from wooded areas into lawn areas and is causing concern. It is an annual, winter annual or biennial. It is a prolific seed producer and produces seed in June. Now is a good time to control it so that is doesn’t set seed next month. Information on it and its control can be found at the related link below.
Annual bluegrass seedhead formation is probably at >75% at the moment. Remember that after annual bluegrass plants set seed they will die off, so turf stands with true annual types of annual bluegrass will look pretty poor over the next couple of weeks.
Fertility
Turf that hasn’t been fertilized yet this season should receive some fertilizer in the next two weeks. There has been good root growth so far this spring. Now that the roots are growing well, it is a good idea to fertilize turf soon so that you can promote a dense turf stand. It is also good to fertilize after a herbicide treatment so that the turf can fill in the voids where the dead weeds are. With all the rain, turf is definitely looking like it could use a shot of nitrogen.
Again, thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The next agriphone message will be recorded on Friday June 2.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-may-26-2006.html#sthash.tFWhxXS2.dpuf
