Fusariummy

So a week has now passed and the results are in for my alternate cutting and daily rolling study! As can be seen from the above chart Cutting and rolling produced the fastest green speed at about 9.5'-10'. Only rolling produced speeds of about 9.5' and cutting only produced speeds of about 8'-9'. The actual speeds that were achieved this last week are less important than the difference in speed that resulted from the different cultural practices that were done to the greens. Cutting and rolling produced the fastest greens and only cutting produced the slowest. Rolling only produced green speeds that weren't significantly different than either Cutting and Rolling or Cutting only. So from this short, unscientific, probably flawed study I can conclude that if you have an option, Roll every day, Cut every other day. Time will tell me how true this last statement is. For this experiment my Toro 3100 with single point adjustment heads, 11 blade reels was set at 0...

Dollar Spot Fungus on #9 Fairway During some recent disease monitoring we have noticed that conditions are prime for the dollar spot fungus. Dollar spot is a fungus that attacks the leaves of turfgrass during periods of prolonged dew, warm temperatures, nitrogen deficiencies and drought stress. As this is August and the nights are a bit longer now we are seeing a longer period of dew than we would normally see during the months of July. Hole 9 in particular had the worst outbreak of the disease as can been seen in the above photo. #8 Fairways has almost no disease Hole 8 on the other hand has almost no sign of the disease.  Both of these fairways have the same fertility, soil type (rock), cultural practices, and moisture levels. At Pender Harbour we don't apply any pesticides to our fairways.  At first this was due to the prohibitive cost of the chemicals but it has evolved to the point where we really don't need them.  Most disease activity during the summer months reall...

It is easy to get used to a particular way of doing things.  For years we at our course have cut the greens daily during the growing season.  This was just the way we did things.  We felt that this was the best way to provide smooth consistent playing conditions on our putting greens.  For the most part this statement was true.  Two years ago we purchased a roller for our greens.  Most of the literature I had read warned that rolling the greens too frequently lead to compaction and wear damage on the green collars.  It suggested that greens be rolled a maximum of 4 times a week.  Other articles suggested that adequate green speeds could be achieved if you cut at a higher than normal height and rolled more often.  So this is what we did........because that was just the way it was done..... We had our greens mower set at a bench height of 0.125" and we rolled 4 times a week.  Green speeds averaged 7-8' on the STIMP meter.  This sucked...