Fusariummy

Just remember… #herdimmunity — Brandon Horvath (@UTTurfPath) November 30, 2017 This tweet started an interesting discussion on twitter today. It centered around herd immunity and turfgrass disease trials and knock out control plots. For those of you who don't know what herd immunity is check out the following tweet. It’s where in a herd of vaccinated animals (like us) the unvaccinated don’t get disease b/c they’re protected by the herd. — Brandon Horvath (@UTTurfPath) November 30, 2017 So essentially Pat might have a clean check plot because all the turf surrounding the plot is treated for disease and this prevents the spread of disease onto the check plot. The discussion then goes on to talk about how there might be better value to have fewer large plots vs many smaller plots to try and account for this apparent phenomenon. Exactly. @luke1utk was @UTturfgrass intern w/Pat this summer and I had him do an independent study on this topic. Jeff, his conclusion was it might be more...

Listening to @PenderSuper at @golfimoso in Iceland this morning. pic.twitter.com/4nGILz3uN1 — Edwin Roald (@EdwinRoald) November 17, 2017 I recently returned from an amazing trip to Ireland and Iceland. There's nothing that teaches me more about greenkeeping than going to see other greenkeepers and learn how they grow grass. This trip was no exception and in my discussions with other seriously deep thinking greenkeepers it got me thinking about how the way I fertilize my grass has changed over the years and helped me understand that basically what I have been doing is trying to reduce the amount of guesswork and luck and resources required to grow good grass. For the most part my experience with fertilizing grass has gone like this; Guess at how much fertilizer to apply based on generalized guidelines, Adjust rates based on observations Guess again.... For the most part we are guessing because fertilizing grass is extremely difficult compared to other crops. Unlike agriculture, ...

Some might call this overwatered, but the VMC is right where we want it and the greens are nice and firm. Watered by hand each morning during the heat. This week I quoted a tweet by the USGA and started a shit storm on twitter. Is there? https://t.co/rSV7Z8OxhW — Jason Haines (@PenderSuper) July 31, 2017 I love it when people get riled up about grass! The reasons I asked the question "is there a good reasons why sprinklers are running during your round" was that for the longest time I thought I needed to water in the afternoon to cool down the grass or to keep it alive to live another day. It turns out that this wasn't the case for me but it was taught in school that afternoon watering was an essential practice to provide good golf course playing surfaces. The article I posted was actually really good and took a good balanced approach at promoting what we do is not necessarily bad and outlining the very good reasons why you might see sprinklers running during the day on a...

Managing turfgrass disease with the goal of reducing or eliminating pesticide use takes a lot of planning, careful observations and fine tuning. While we are currently in the middle of the summer turf disease cycle, I am already planning ahead for the most difficult time of year that I face when managing turf disease, September. September has always been a challenging time of year for me as we transition from managing for dollar spot to managing for fusarium patch. These disease are seemingly polar opposites when it comes to IPM strategies. High nitrogen reduces the impact of dollar spot and low nitrogen reduces the impact of fusarium patch. During the transition I am forced to pick a side and often lose the battle on both fronts. So far in my career, September is the only month that I have not been able to get through without the need for a corrective fungicide application for either dollar spot or fusarium patch. Last month I made an interesting observation about clipping yield and...