Fusariummy

About 1.5 years ago the golf course industry in British Columbia was facing a real threat of an outright cosmetic pesticide ban. At this time I wrote a post about how I thought we should focus our efforts not just on fighting the ban but also on alternative pest control strategies just in case the ban became a reality. Ever since writing that post my blog has taken on a different purpose. It once started as a way to communicate with my members but changed into a tool for me to share my experiences as I try to reduce my reliance on pesticides on the golf course. I would by lying if I said the past 2 years had been easy. It has been a journey filled with highs and lows. Highs such as seeing the possible effects that rolling has on fusarium patch and going 360 days without a synthetic pesticide application on my 8th green have overshadowed the lows of losing grass and being ridiculed by my peers for being different and maybe a bit crazy. I have experienced great success and also great ...

Well I broke down today and sprayed a traditional contact fungicide on most of my greens. I just wasn't confident that I could recover from the recent fusarium outbreak without it. Everything seemed to be going really good until yesterday when the turf growth rates exploded as did the fusarium activity. It would appear that the turf has finished its seed head production cycle and has now gone back to some serious vegetative growth again. One of the less infected areas. Still green from a recent Civitas application. Making the decision to spray was difficult because I really wanted to see if I could make it until the summer without the need for conventional pesticides. As usual I left some knock out areas to see if I could in fact outpace the disease without the contact pesticide. This time last year I did almost the exact same thing and the knock outs suggested that I did not need a fungicide. This is why the decision to spray this year was even harder this time around. I had to w...

Lately I have begun to change the way I approach weeds in the landscape. In my experience over the past decade I have seen a lot of weed management failures, not just on the golf course but also on people's home lawns. I have noticed a few things and here is what I have got. The principle is this: Instead of focusing on the pest, focus on the desirable species. It might sound easy but it is really a hard thing to do.  Take dandelions in your home lawn for example. When dandelions sprout on most people's lawns their first reaction is "what do I apply to kill these dandelions?" While this is a fantastic short term solution it really solves nothing over time and not after long the lawn is usually plagued with more dandelions. Instead of focusing your energy on the dandelion focus on the needs of the turf. The dandelions aren't the issues. The turf that is weak and unable to out-compete the dandelions is the real issue. I am often approached by members telling me I be...

Seed head popping up prior to mowing. I've always been a manager of Poa annua greens and I always dread the onset of seed head each May. It seems that just as my greens have recovered from aeration they get all soft and bumpy again due to the sea of white seed heads. YUCK. Over the past few years the issues I have been experiencing with the seed head have gone from borderline major to practically non-existent. Of course it could be that changing climate that is to blame but my ego would like to think that it is because of what I am doing that is making the difference. Here's to me! Way back when I was new to the grass growing business I remember mowers stalling out trying to push through the puffy greens. The greens were more white than green and any attempt at achieving anything considered greenspeed was futile. We would fight the poa by aggressively verticutting to thin the puffy inflorescence filled canopy and would reduce nitrogen inputs to try and slow the growth of the...

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...