Fusariummy

Spot spraying has been a big part of my IPM program for the last few years. I hypothesized that winter diseases like fusarium on the coast aren't really that bad, we just make them worse by spreading them around . In order to capitalize on this theory I have been spot spraying my greens with traditional fungicides to attempt to limit that spread. During the time that I have been doing this I have never had such success managing my nemesis, fusarium . On the surface, spot spraying seems like a pretty simple and basic tool. See disease, spray it. The problem is that it takes time and if it doesn't help you stretch the intervals that you need to apply a broadcast fungicide spray, then there is little point in doing it. Where spot spraying really becomes a powerful tool is when you count and record the number of disease spots that you treat each day you spot spray. Counting and recording this data doesn't take any additional effort unless you find counting difficult. It does re...

On the West Coast of Canada we are now well into the time of year where fusarium is the dominant disease on turf. Reflecting on the summer of 2016 I can't help but feel somewhat defeated by turf disease. I required a traditional fungicide for dollar spot for the first time in 4 years on my greens. While this has left me feeling down about my disease management plan this year a closer reflection shows that while I lost the battle to dollar spot, I won the battle with every other turf disease on my course this summer. Looking back at the data, the battles I have had in previous years, what other courses in my area were dealing with I can feel really good about my disease management this past year. To recap the requirement of traditional fungicide on my course this year so far is rather easy. The last fungicide application of the winter was on Feb 22. From that time I was able to keep disease levels at acceptable levels until Sept 4 when I needed to take action against dollar spot. Th...

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 ...

We are now safely enough into Spring that I can reflect on the Winter fusarium battle. We aren't in the clear yet, though, as we have had to battle fusarium right until the end of June in some years. The recent record breaking hot weather has sure helped but as we return to normal April weather this week I fully expect the fusarium to make a resurgence. As the title suggests, this winter was an absolute breeze when dealing with fusarium on all parts of my course. The weather was abnormally warm and wet but this didn't seem to make the disease worse as you might think. I have often hypothesized that it isn't the weather that makes fusarium bad during the winter, it's our maintenance practices that do . Sorry, I literally have no fusarium to show you.  I have talked and seen other courses that did not have the same luck as me. Of course no golf course is the same and there are a ton of factors involved. The reason I think I had such good success this winter is a combinat...

Clear pattern of disease on approaches Jan 5 2015 My approaches have always been hammered by fusarium during the cool, wet winter months. Last year I hypothesized that most of the damage caused by fusarium was a result of the mowers spreading the disease around and that we might be able to reduce this damage by using Primo in the winter. This winter I decided to try out iron and primo to try and reduce the severity of the fusarium on my approaches. As you can see from the above picture taken on Jan 5 2015, the plan appears to be workin. No other products have been applied to the approaches and traditional pesticides are never applied to the approaches except for minimal overlap from the greens applications. Recent research has shown that at putting green height a rate of 97.65kg iron sulfate/ ha every 2 weeks provided almost complete control of fusarium during the winter. Because my approaches are cut at a much higher HOC I halved this rate for my approaches and have stretched the int...

Step 1: Do not apply a preventative fungicide prior to verticutting greens despite there being a small amount of active fusarium present. Step 2: Verticut greens in 2 directions. Be sure to start on the always untreated collars to drag the innoculum onto the greens. Step 3: Do not spot spray any new infection sites for the next 2 weeks. Step 3: Irrigate with cool spring freshet water during an early season dry spell. Step 4: Continue to mow with dull "rockbuster" reels almost daily for 1 week to spread the disease even further. On Tuesday, April 22nd I put out the first broadcast traditional fungicide spray in almost 4 months! in that time I had used nothing but phosphite and careful spot spraying to keep the greens almost 100% clean of any disease. Spot spraying was going so good right up until it went bad! I expected spot spraying to eventually not work but for completely different reasons. I initially thought that the natural incidence of disease would be the factor that I...