Fusariummy

Turfgrass management is a constant battle. Grass vs disease, grass vs weeds, and even grass vs grass. Sometimes it's obvious who is winning the battle but sometimes the victorious organism is less obvious. This week while looking over some old pictures of the moss disease on my practice green (the moss is all gone by the way) I noticed something that I think could be useful for turf managers to quickly gauge which plant is winning and which is losing. Take a look at the following pic of poa taking over silvery thread moss with the help of some sort of fungi. It looks very similar to the next picture with is Microdochium nivale totally destroying my approaches a few years back. And this picture of cyanobacteria thinning poa on my greens. In all these cases the organism that is winning the battle has a round shape. In the first picture the grass is winning, and in the next two the grass is losing and the fungi/bacteria/algae are winning. Obviously if the conditions are favorable for ...

This week on twitter I saw an interesting tweet. Va. Tech's Shawn Askew at Nufarm turf conference: "We've evaluated 2 fungal organisms that attack moss on greens." pic.twitter.com/JJxvwh0fDS — SuperintendentMag (@SuperintndtMag) June 15, 2016 This triggered my memory of the moss disease I had on my greens a few years ago. I wrote about that in a post in 2013 . The reason I hadn't thought much about this interesting moss disease was that for the most part the moss on my greens is gone. What did I spray? Well in 2012 I sprayed Kocide 2000. It worked but was pretty harsh on my turf and the moss quickly came back. In 2014 I sprayed quicksilver but left my upper practice green unsprayed to see what would happen with the serious moss disease infestation. Also, this spray wasn't successful with most of the moss coming back shortly after my 3 successive applications. In 2013 my upper practice green looked like this. Today it looks like this and I have not sprayed anyt...

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) isn't a new concept. It might actually be one of the oldest ways turf managers have dealt with certain pests, but in recent times we have been able to rely less and less on IPM practices as amazing new pest control products come to market. These new products essentially allow us to do almost anything to our grass regardless of what the pest pressure is. Integrated pest management  ( IPM ), also known as  integrated pest control  ( IPC ) is a broad-based approach that integrates practices for economic control of  pests . IPM aims to suppress pest populations below the economic injury level (EIL) Source: Wikipedia Now even with these highly effective pest control products we still need to use IPM to some extent to help get through periods of extreme disease pressure. Raising the heights of cut, water management, and fertilizer practices can all help when used in conjunction with effective pest control products. There's no product that w...