Fusariummy

GP finally = 0!! Growth Potential Fertility (GP) is still a relatively new concept in turfgrass management. For the past 2 years I have been using it as the main method to determine rates and timing of fertilizer applications. If you haven't already read this  excellent article  by Dr. Micah Woods, I highly suggest you do otherwise this post won't make much sense. I currently use GP to fertilize greens, tees, and fairways. My main motivation to use GP fertility is to reduce the incidence of disease and to reduce or eliminate any excess or waste in my operation. That is the main purpose of GP, to only apply as much nutrients as the plant needs at the correct times. I have had quite a few questions how I use GP in practice. Here is a brief overview of how I use GP on each area of my golf course. For Greens I apply simple soluble source nutrients weekly applied through my sprayer. Every Monday I check the forecast and from this I get the average temperature for the following week...

So here's a funny story. Last Tuesday the 28th of Oct as I was finishing up mowing fairways I took a pass across the approach of the first green just to see how it looked. The past 2 days had seen a heavy frost so I wasn't able to get onto the greens to have a good look. To my horror the entire green appeared yellow. "Oh shit! I've killed the greens.....again!!!" The Saturday before I couldn't believe how great the greens looked. Everything was looking good going into November and the winter. I wasn't going to let what happened last winter happen again. Dead grass this time of year sucks to say the least. So that Tuesday night I got no sleep. I was a nervous wreck. The next day I went out to check on everything and yep, I thought I had killed them. I tried to figure out what went wrong. The Sunday before was a nice day and my weekend staffer assured me there wasn't any frost when he rolled. I didn't believe him or the pro shop staff. This had to be...

As things wind down for the season I begin to have time to reflect on the past season and make sense of some of the data I have collected. This season wasn't without it's challenges especially when it comes to disease management without the use of traditional pesticides. Obviously I wasn't successful but I made some important observations that should help me next year.  I had an amazingly successful winter  but it all came crashing down in June . I again had a very successful July and August but again in early September I was hit hard with fusarium. June and September have always been tough months as they are transition months, they are warm but also usually wet. This creates the perfect storm for fungal attack. Without an effective organic contact pesticide I was out of luck. It is pretty well known that high nitrogen generally means higher incidence of fusarium on putting greens. It wasn't until I came across the GP fertility method that I was able to more accurately...

It has been almost 2 months since my last post and it's not because nothing has been happening. It was a really busy and good summer and I was trying some new things out to combat disease on the golf course. Since my last disease update the main disease of focus has been Dollar Spot. Last year I was successful in combating Dollar Spot on my greens but my fairways were wiped out. It was the worst I had ever seen actually. As always applying a fungicide to my fairways wasn't possible. You could see the devastation from space More disease than grass in 2012 I accounted this extreme disease to a few factors. In an attempt to drive down fertilizer use on my fairways I had got to 100% UMAXX slow release nitrogen source. This allowed me to put down a heavier granular rate that would last longer. In theory I could get by with just two applications per year and would half the amount of nitrogen on my fairways. With the tools I had at the time this seemed to be the most realistic way to...

                                               I noticed something interesting happening to the moss on my practice green this summer. It appeared to be under attach by some sort of pathogen. I posted some pictures online when I first made the observation and had literally no feedback as to what it could be. Maybe no one had seen this on their course because they didn't have this much moss? The first time I head of the possibility of this disease was from the Superintendent at my neighbour course. He had a very slight case of this but it really wasn't that obvious and I shrugged it off as nothing. I was really surprised to see such a widespread incidence on my practice green this spring. Today I came across a blog post from Dan Strey from Iowa State University who had made a similar observation in one of his moss studies. He found it to be  Sclerotium rolfsii and...

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....

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 ...