I hope you don't fly Delta!

As Megan stated, the majority of us spent last week in San Diego assisting with educational seminars and visiting with cooperators on the trade show floor. However, if you were one of the unfortunate attendees who is a loyal traveler on Delta Airlines then you may just be lucky enough to still be in the warm weather of Southern California.  (More on this at the end of this post)

As Megan stated earlier, many of us had the chance to help out with the Microscope Workshop ran by Henry Wetzel and Alan Windham (a must for any turf manager looking for a great educational day at GIS).  While there were many samples of active disease from the San Diego region, much of the country continues to experience cold weather.  Despite this, it is a good time to start planning your spring activities as we are really only a month or two away even in New England.

For many, the disappearing snow will bring a lot of cleanup.  For others, it will be the wondering if the discolored Poa will actually green up. In many cases, the turf actually looks decent coming out of winter, but as soon as growth begins the real signs of winter damage are noticed.  In situations where winter kill is a large problem, the only fast solution is to slice, spike, core, overseed, slice, spike, overseed, etc. until you get some grass.  Unfortunately, most of the time this results in the domination of new stands of annual bluegrass (and not the good kind).  If you experience winter damage and you are stuck in the aforementioned situation, be careful and diligent about managing Poa diseases as this young turf really won't have much time to prepare itself for the summer (I am predicting one of the toughest summers in a long time this year).  Young Poa will likely be highly susceptible to diseases like anthracnose, dollar spot, continued Microdochium activity early in the season, and other diseases. For those of you lucky enough to make through the winter unscathed, now is the perfect time to start planning your weapon of choice for your annual bluegrass seedhead suppression. Will it be embark or Primo+Proxy? Leave your comments below!

Back to my comments about getting stuck back in CA. For 22 Penn State's students and staff, getting out of the sunny city wasn't so easy.  Flights were canceled across the country due to snow in various parts of the country, but most importantly in Atlanta.  That basically shut down Atlanta airport and created a backlog of travelers stuck in the airport. I believe that most of my students finally got back today, while some staff is still on their way back as we speak.  Thank goodness the students' won $1000 in the competition, because it is going to be needed to pay for the extra hotel rooms!  I hope they enjoyed the extra days of "sitting around the pool drinking beer".

For those interested in reading about others who think Delta stinks, just search "Delta Sucks" in google.  Here was my favorite... http://deltaisevil.blogspot.com/.


Oh, I almost forgot...Please take the poll and let us know what you thought of the new format for GCSAA (education on Mon., Tues., Fri. and trade show on Wed.-Thurs.).