Welcome to the “Turf Agriphone” sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. This message is being recorded for the period of Sept. 18-29, 2006. I have taken a two week hiatus from recording the turf agriphone message. Just to let you know, this is the second to last update for the season. The last update will be on Fri. Sept. 29, 2006.
Diseases
Weatherwise, we have had some nice dry weather, but the forecast is for six days of rain out of the next 14 days. Temperatures are forecast to be around the seasonal normals, which is about 16-18ºC. This wet, cool weather will certainly spur on some fall disease development. On the fall disease front, dollar spot is still active on both close mowed and fairway height turf. Fusarium patch activity has just begun. Another diseases which likes similar conditions if yellow patch or cool season brown patch. We are seeing it on shady greens that have long periods of leaf wetness. Red thread has also been very active. There are still symptoms evident from necrotic ring spot. Rust has slowed down now for the season.
Insects
We have had a good two week window now of heavy adult European crane fly flights in the Guelph area. Flights began about a week ago in the Niagara Peninsula. The adults seem to congregate in shady wet areas. They definitely prefer flying on calm days. The adult females need to lay eggs in wet soil for the eggs to survive. I would predict that with all the rain up until now and the rain in the forecast that there is a good chance that we will have heavy leatherjacket populations this fall and next spring.
European chafer grubs and Japanese beetle grubs are developing quickly now and are in late second and early third instar. One good thing is that turf roots are very abundant and deep at the moment with the cool weather and all the moisture. It will take a lot of grub feeding to devour all these healthy turf roots. It is quite possible that we will not see much grub damage this fall even though the grubs are there. We have had cutworm feeding over the last couple of weeks and sod webworm damage is starting to show up on some home lawns.
Weeds
We are approaching the optimum time for broadleaf herbicide applications. Research has found that if you wait until October, especially after a hard frost, the hard to kill broadleaf weeds such as ground ivy are more likely to be controlled.
By now the early fall fertilizer application should have been made. This should be followed up by a late fall fertilization at the end of October to the beginning of November.
Just a note also that we have passed the fall seeding window. We recommend that seeding be done between mid-Aug to mid-September.
Thanks to everyone who attended our August Turf Research Field day. It was a great success and we received lots of positive feedback about it.
Thanks for phoning the turf agriphone message for this week. The final turf agriphone message for the season will be recorded on Fri. Sept. 29, 2006.
– See more at: https://lawnsavers.com/turf-hotline-2006/turfgrass-management-agriphone-for-september-18-2006.html#sthash.RWw5sqDL.dpuf
