Fusariummy

Approaching rant territory here: If you have been following my blog you will know that I have been experimenting with alternative pest control products for golf courses this season. So far I can say that I am completely amazed at how far these products have come in such a short time. It is much too early to jump to conclusion, but what I am seeing is very promising for the case towards organic golf course maintenance. Two very promising organic pesticides For someone toying with the whole "organic" thing it is unsettling to hear that both organic golf courses in British Columbia seem to have gone out of business. It's sad to hear but in my opinion it's not surprising. In my opinion there are a few reasons why organic golf courses have failed in the past and will continue to fail in the future. Of course these are generalizations and should not be taken personally. I do not have the actual reasons these courses are no longer in business. Firstly is that in my experienc

Summer has finally arrived and the long wet Fusarium filled spring is gone! Thank God! Anyway with the warmer drier weather comes the threat of Dollar Spot. The past two summers around the middle of  July we got hit hard with dollar spot. It came overnight and it was very widespread and required a fungicide application to keep it under control. This year we have changed our approach to managing for dollar spot in a number of ways. Fertility: Last year we were on a brand name fertility program. While the turf looked good I wasn't too impressed with the overall health of the turf. It seemed that I was spraying more often than not and the turf was just sick. This year I completely redesigned my fertility program specifically for disease prevention. This summer my plan is simple. Light and frequent applications of urea through my sprayer. Urea is a readily available form of nitrogen and when applied in light doses you reduce the risk of leaching and volatizational losses. I feel that a

Testing VMC on putting greens. Well the weather is finally dry enough that we are again using our TDR 200 moisture meter on putting greens. It has been a week without rain with temps in the mid to high 20s and we still have over 30% Volumetric Moisture Content (VMC) in our greens. Normally we aim for about 20-25%. We hope that in the next few days the moisture levels drop even more and we can really firm up the greens. Five years ago before we had a moisture meter on the golf course we did an irrigation audit on our putting green irrigation systems and found that on average we had about 45% Distribution Unifromity (DU) efficiency. At best you can expect to get about 70-80% on most good systems and we fell well short. This poor efficiency and the fact that we were essentially guessing how much moisture in our putting green soil made if very difficult to irrigate our putting greens. We decided that the best course of action was to upgrade our old outdated irrigation system to a state of

Last month I came across the discovery that rolling might have an impact on Microdochium nivale or Fusarium Patch. Immediately after making this observation I began to roll my greens 2x daily as I had a serious Fusarium outbreak on my hands. It was the end of May and it had been over a month since my last fungicide application. Here is a picture showing just how much disease I was looking at. Very Active Mycelium I decided to give rolling a whirl. I waited an entire week after this picture was taken to apply a fungicide. I really wanted to give rolling a chance. I knew that rolling for curative control wasn't likely to work but what the hell? Rolling didn't seem to be helping after a week so I sprayed. When I sprayed I put down the sheet of plywood to really see if the fungicide application was actually needed. I was somewhat sure that I could grow out the disease but it was so widespread that if it really decided to take off I would lose a very large percentage of my putting