Fusariummy

When I told a local superintendent my intentions to try Civitas on my greens again he threatened to kick me in the nuts. Here's why and please note that this post does not contain any paid promotions although I am probably broke enough now to finally start selling out. Hey, I also started a vlog, check it out here . Back in 2012 I started using Civitas on my greens. It worked amazing. Back then only my 8th green was dominated by bentgrass and I went an entire year without any traditional pesticides on that green. Just mineral oil. The only problem was that on a few of my shadier greens they turned to dirt and for the first time in my career I was forced to deal with winter kill. Winter Kill of 2012 caused by a number of factors that mineral oil certainly didn't help. Shade much? It turns out that when you apply oil to your greens every few weeks while the turf isn't growing and combine that with almost daily rolling of the greens that you will get dead grass. Lesson leaned?...

Organic is seen by most (by most I mean the uneducated public) as the best way to manage a golf course. Over the years I've tried to go down that road but found that there were too many problems with going "organic." Long story short, I think we can do better than organic. Putting labels on things has always bothered me. Committing to organic or vegetarianism or veganism or low carb is too limiting for me. Yes, they are probably good targets to work towards but if you commit to these ways of thinking you can hide yourself from other ideas that might actually be better than these restricting ideologies require. The environmental impact of my golf course operation is one of my main concerns as a golf course superintendent. I don't want to do things that negatively impact the environment and will look for ways to reduce this impact in any way I can. Of course in the back of my mind there are costs to be aware of and course conditions to maintain as well (who am I kidding...

It's no secret that I try pretty hard to reduce the amount of pesticide required on my golf course. I've tried a lot of things and over the years have refined my IPM strategy to only do what makes a real difference. They cost a lot, the public perception of pesticide use is negative, and it is a fun challenge to try and work towards reducing the use of pesticides on my golf course. Things that didn't make a significant impact have been removed from my program. This past summer I went longer than ever between traditional broadcast fungicide applications or about 192 days . In previous years I would consider 60 days something to be proud of. Even so, I still required spot applications of traditional fungicides to stop disease spread and track the disease pressure of dollar spot on my greens. Recently I came across this tweet. A complete year #fungicide free. Aeration, rain and cold haven't made a dent in our no fusarium success. #allorganic #free pic.twitter.com/jX4m...

It's the theme on twitter this week and you are all probably sick of it but the discussions have inspired me and when I'm inspired I write about it. Who wants to read uninspired writing anyway? Irregardless..... ;) Just when you think twitter is old and boring it gets interesting and I welcome the criticism of what I'm doing as long as it's constructive. Name calling and refusing to interact in meaningful discussion with me accomplish nothing. I'm always surprised how offended some people are about what I blog about. Crazy.... Dave Wilber had an excellent rant in his latest TZP where he talks about how "if it didn't happen in a university trial it's not real." Now before I dive into this let me say I'm on the fence with this one. I agree with Dave's points of view...sometimes. Let me explain. A lot of the cool stuff in turfgrass management is happening outside of university trials. Most superintendents have their pet theories and are consta...

This post is a bit late as I have been a tad busy the past few weeks moving to a new town and battling the July summer heat. June might go down as one of the most difficult months I have ever had dealing with disease and the survival of my putting greens. I had two of the worst outbreaks of Fusarium I have ever seen in my 6 years as Superintendent here. It was a stressful month to say the least but I came out of it with a few new strategies for next year. The massive failure that was June 2013 helped me fine tune my disease management strategy. June seems to be becoming a wet month in my part of the world. Last year it was consistently wet all month long. This year it started off with a few intense rain events then got decently nice for a week or so followed by an insane week of rain (same weather event that flooded Calgary). The first week of June my original disease management approach fell apart and I was forced to go back to traditional pesticides to regain control of the fusarium....

So it has been a while since my last post and it is not because nothing has been happening. It has been busy running a golf course with a 3 person crew including myself. Lately people have been asking me how my battle with disease has been going so I thought I would throw out an update to catch everyone up. I have continued on with my updated plan that I revised in February  Plans are always subject to change and my disease management plan has continued to evolve this spring. So far the plan has been a great success with no major disease outbreaks to speak of. My applications of Civitas and phosphites every 3 weeks combined with my GP fertility program have really produced amazing results. As of today the greens are full of disease quite uniformly but the severity of that disease is minimal. By minimal I mean that you can see it, but barely, and it's not getting worse. Here is a picture to show just how bad it is. If you look really hard you can see many disease infection cen...

This time of year is a great time for observing the golf course. As things slowly wake up drastic differences can often be observed that would otherwise be hidden in the flood of green that always comes in April. Today while surveying my tees I noticed a million tiny bright green specs of turf. It looked similar to the speckling you would see if you applied a light application of a coarse fertilizer. In this case it wasn't fertilizer that was causing the green specs, it was earthworms. The earthworms consume the organic matter that is contained in the soils and the result is worm castings. These castings contain readily available nutrients that the turf can use. The earthworms also help to aerate the soils similar to the aeration that we perform each spring and fall. We have earthworms on all parts of the course especially the tees, fairways and rough. There are naturally less earthworms on the putting greens as they are almost pure sand with very little organic matter for the worm...

Happy February! Still no synthetics here! If you would have asked me last September if it was possible to grow Poa annua putting greens without the use of synthetic pesticides over the winter I would have called you crazy. It is now almost March and I have 3 greens that have gone without synthetic pesticides since September and one green since June! The toughest part of the fusarium season has past but it is far from over! For the most part I feel that the overall disease pressure this fall and winter has been low. We had an extended dry period this fall and the winter wasn't that cold or wet. February has been very mild and the turf has really started to grow. A little R. cerealis showing up again Currently the only troublesome turf diseases thy are active are M. nivale and R. cerealis . Tees and fairways have a moderate amount of fusarium and the approaches have an extreme case! The greens have had almost no fusarium activity all winter but I did apply two fungicide treatment...