Fusariummy

When I first started in the turf industry my superintendent would always have me go drag the dew to "prevent the fusarium." When I became a superintendent in 2007 I think the only time that I actually dragged greens for disease prevention was the first year. Since then, dew removal has not been a part of my fusarium plan as I never really thought it made much different. Until today I never had any data to support that theory just observations. We use a dew drag and it would miss areas around the edges and there was no difference in disease pressure on the edges. To be honest it was more out of pure laziness that I didn't remove dew. The only times I dew whip is when it's a nice day for golf and I'm not rolling the greens. Today I came across some preliminary results from a study being conducted at Oregon State University on alternative control methods for Microdochium patch . So far they haven't seen any significant difference between plots that the dew is re...

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...