Fusariummy

This summer I set out a disease management plan aimed at controlling Fusarium Patch with as little traditional pesticides as possible. So far this plan has been very successful at controlling M. nivale but in the past 2 weeks I have been caught off guard by another disease, R. cerealis or yellow patch or cool season brown patch or, or or or etc. This is typically the worst that I have seen yellow patch in previous years. Historically R. cerealis or yellow patch has never been a disease of concern for me. Last year I wrote a post outlining how I have never had to do anything for this disease on my greens ever. Since writing that post I have learned a lot about disease management. While the message remains the same my experience has changed quite a lot. When I wrote that post I was still regularly using traditional pesticides as needed on my putting greens. I was using a lot less than in previous years but I was nowhere near the lack of pesticide use that I am at today. Sinc...

Roughskin Newt Nov 15 9th green  Yesterday while inspecting my greens I came across this Roughskin Newt ( Tarichia granulosa ). In recent months I have seen a noticeable increase in the number of newt or salamander sightings on the putting greens at my course. This is the fifth salamander sighting since September. I have always made mental note of newt sightings on the course simply because they are quite rare. I can only remember about 4 or 5 sightings in 12 years before this September. Salamanders are considered to be an indicator species as they are extremely sensitive to environmental changes or pollution. They basically breathe and drink through their skin. Where human skin is one of our greatest defense mechanisms, amphibians will absorb anything they come in contact with through their skin. Many also spend part of their life cycle in aquatic environments and terrestrial environments which means that any pollution in either will drastically affect them. Th...

The leaves are on the ground now so I guess it's safe to say fall has finally arrived. We saw a very extended summer that lasted well into October. The extreme dry conditions we faced in September were very interesting to say the least. I learned a great deal about both Fusarium and Dollar Spot and the conditions that favour these fungal organisms. Early September saw the overnight temperatures finally start to drop down to reasonable levels. My original Fall disease management plan was put in jeopardy in early September due to a sprayer breakdown. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or what but about a week after stopping my disease management program Fusarium started to show up on a few of my greens. It was in the usual spots at first but quickly spread out on all but 5 of our 12 greens. The greens where it wasn't located were the greens that received the most sun which wasn't surprising. The first signs of the fusarium showed up on the 5th of Septe...

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about a new product in the Canadian turf industry, Civitas. Aside from all of the known benefits some superintendents (including myself) have noticed a slight reduction in dew on our greens. In previous years we had always used a dew whip or drag on days where there was a heavy dew. We would either drag before the green mower or would only drag on days when we didn't cut the greens. This year I have yet to see the need to drag the dew off even once on my putting greens. This even 1 month post application at the 0.250ml/100m2 rate. Areas that haven't been treated on my course have had a lot of dew compared to the greens. This is hard to compare, though, as longer turf tends to hold more dew naturally than the close cut putting green turf. Early this week I applied 2 different Civitas rates to my fairway nursery to see if there was any difference in the dew formation. So far it appears to the naked eye that there is a difference but it...