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Civitas and Dew

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's hard to tell if this is just related to the colour of the harmonizer dye playing a trick on the eye. I haven't figured out how I can quantify the amount of dew easily on these trial areas yet. My next application will be on one of my practice greens to compare.
0.125 Civitas on the left and .250 Civitas on the right. Nothing
in the middle.

Although I have a hunch that it is only an optical illusion I can say that there is much less, if any, rooster tails on golf balls when rolled on un-whipped greens. Perhaps this could be a better judge on how much dew is present. Who knows?

Aside from the playability benefit of having less dew on the greens this could be another reason why many other turf managers and myself are seeing such great results from Civitas. Less dew usually means less disease!

There is still dew present but I think it might be less
So for now it could just be that the dye is playing a trick on me but then again who knows. I really look forward to any formal research on this phenomenon.
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