Rolling and Fusarium OSU Trial Update

A few years ago the turf industry in BC was facing a pesticide ban and our association set out to fight the ban successfully. At the time I was worried that we needed to also spend some resources in coming up with alternative pest control measures just in case the ban was enacted. I also wrote to the Western Canada Turfgrass Association with my concerns. Ever since then, alternative pest control strategies have been the focus of this blog.

Last fall I was contacted to by the WCTA to see what I thought would be some things to try. They were already interested in phosphite and Civitas but I also suggested lightweight rolling as I had seen some interesting things on my study green with regards to fusarium.

Just last month I was delighted to read that they had gone ahead with research funding at Oregon State University and had some preliminary results to share! I was also honored to be mentioned in one of the articles.

I won't repeat everything already in the above article so read it for yourself. Basically what they have found is that rolling does in fact seem to have some beneficial effects when it comes to fusarium patch control. They are also testing rolling frequency which is something that I think is important. From my findings 2 years ago it was quite apparent that further benefit was seen from more frequent rolling. This was something that might have been missed in past studies on rolling and fusarium because who would think that more rolling would be any different. Guess what, it is!

My findings from May 2012

It is really cool to see this kind of research being done and I am very proud that my association is funding research of this kind. I think that all members of the WTCA should be proud that not only are they fighting the ban, they are being proactive in funding research that will help us all be better turf managers.

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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