Skip to main content

Control Areas

Something that I have always taken for granted at the Pender Harbour Golf Club is the fact that I can easily see what the overall disease pressure is on my turf. Due to the cost and the environmental conditions at our course we only have to apply pesticides to our putting green surfaces. This leaves the rest of my course as a "control" plot.

Fusarium on the tees shows me that it is active.
I can easily see when the other areas are being infected with disease or other pests. I can then take this information and use it to plan my pesticide applications on my putting greens. When pesticides are applied to my putting greens it becomes impossible for me to see what the true pest pressure is because all of the pest is suppressed by the pesticide.

I had the pleasure of hearing Jeff Carlson of Martha's Vineyard Golf Club speak at this year's WCTA conference.  For those of you who don't know, Martha's Vineyard is one of a few courses that is completely organic but still maintains comparable conditions to most "non organic" golf courses.  He showed us how he has a control green at his course that shows him the benefits of the cultural practices that they perform.  He can easily see the benefits that rolling, dew whipping, and any of the organic pesticides he is able to use.  It really helps him gain perspective and justify the huge amount of work that it takes to manage turfgrass without synthetic chemicals.

Scenes like this clearly show the benefit of pesticides to your
turf's health and playability.
This winter I have talked with a few turf managers about how they leave areas of the course without pesticides to see how the conditions differ.  This is a fantastic idea and allows the managers of these areas to see the benefits of their pesticide use.  It is also a great tool to show the public or membership what would happen if pesticides were not used or banned. It could also tell the turf manager that pesticides might not be needed.  It can really help us learn about how our management practices affect the turf.

Another idea that has been thrown around is the "sheet of plywood" method where a sheet of plywood is placed on the turf before a product is applied to see the differences that result.  The area covered with the plywood does not receive the application so it allows the turf manager to evaluate the benefits of the applied product.

Fusarium mycelium in winter.  This disease is definitely active!
Either way it is good to have a control area on your course so that you can see the benefits of your management practices.  It will help you make better decisions based on results.  It will also help you show the membership/public that what you are doing is justified.




Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Turfgrass speedo is still my most important tool for managing turf growth after 4 years.

It wasn't the easiest year for growing grass , but the conditions were still pretty good. Almost 4 years ago exactly, I came up with the idea of comparing actual clipping yields to the "ideal" clipping yield or the clipping yield adjusted using the Growth Potential Model . Since then, it has proved to be a much more useful tool to manage growth than I originally thought .  It has been almost a decade since I started making observations on plant health and playability and how it relates to the clipping yield. I have been constantly searching for ways to get the growth rate right as often as I can and this tool seems to be the best way I have seen so far, and might ultimately, be the best way going forward. To prove this point I will discuss in a future post, the success I've had with pest control in the past few years (for the most part (Not withstanding the times where I think my greens are dead but they actually aren't...thanks T)). Never needed less There are ...
Read more

Do you have enough?

I recently discussed how we can use fertilizer ratios to simplify how much fertilizer we apply to help us keep above the MLSN guidelines . When we get a soil test done it is a static amount of nutrients found in the soil. Even if you are above the MLSN guidelines at the time of testing, it doesn't guarantee that you will remain at or above the guidelines as the grass grows and consumes nutrients. There is math that you can use to determine exactly how much nutrient you need to apply to ensure that you remain at or above the MLSN guidelines. For many, this is much too complicated. For that reason I made a quick cheat sheet to help you determine how much of each nutrient you can expect to use each year based off a few different annual nitrogen rates. Nutrient use is based primarily on nitrogen use so the left 2 columns are a few different nitrogen rates. The columns for each nutrient are in PPM and are designed to help you look at your current soil test PPM (mehlich 3) and determin...
Read more

How to quantify nutrient content in liquid fertilizer

In a recent post, I discussed how it was actually cheaper to spray soluble vs granular fertilizer. What about if we use pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? How do we even figure out how much nutrient we are applying with pre-mixed liquid fertilizer?  Before I learned that you could simply dissolve soluble fertilizer in water and apply it in a sprayer, I was a big user of pre-mixed liquid fertilizers. One of the issues I initially had was figuring out exactly how much of each nutrient I was applying. The math wasn't as straightforward is it was with granular fertilizers. It turns out, it's actually not that difficult but requires an extra step.  First, we need to convert the liquid volume into a mass. Many products will have the product density displayed on the label or you can look in the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for that information as well. No SDS? Should you be using products without an SDS? Even if this information isn't included on the label it is very easy to figure out. All ...
Read more