It's Waitea-licious!

Waitea, Waitea, every where,
Yellow rings all over my grass;
Waitea, Waitea, every where,
What a pain in the ass.
(apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for bastardizing The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner)

OK - I get fooled more than I'd like to when it comes to recognizing turf diseases. A few weeks ago I received the photo of rings on creeping bentgrass (above) from Gabe Towers from Target Specialty Products in Arizona and said "that's take all patch!" despite Gabe thinking it was a Rhizoctonia disease. After isolations from the turf - we did confirm that the damage was caused by Waitea circinata var circinata aka "brown ring patch". Unlike the nice yellow rings that the pathogen causes on annual bluegrass, this is what Wcc looks like on bentgrass. Thus the name "brown ring patch" as described by Japanese plant pathologists who first characterized the disease on creeping bentgrass.

BRP is pretty active in California right now - showing up on both annual bluegrass and rough bluegrass putting greens.

One question that came up this week at a meeting in San Diego was "If I have active BRP going into spring aerification, should I worry about it?" I think that it shouldn't be a problem if you apply a good shot of nitrogen after core aerification - at least 1/2# N per 1,000 sq ft should help reduce down the severity of the disease. If it's still active a week or two after aerification, a shot of fungicide should help get rid of it, but the combination of N fertility and OM/thatch removal should help reduce the disease.

As far as fungicides, I heard some concerns over the short residual control that Endorse/Affirm was giving on greens. If you tank mix the polyoxin-D application with 1 fl oz of Banner MAXX, you should get 28 days or more control of the disease (outside of California, you could use 0.28 oz of Tourney or 1 fl oz of Trinity in place of the Banner MAXX in the tank mix if either Tourney or Trinity is available). A follow up application a week to 2 weeks later with 2.2 oz of ProStar will give you near cmplete control of the disease, but often with the increased N, the first Endorse or Affirm application with a DMI should do the trick.

Fairy Ring Activty
With spring coming in the West, we're also picking up some increased fairy ring activity. Green rings or mushroom on your turf are a sure sign of fairy ring activity . Although a number of fungicides can work vs fairy ring, it's also important to apply the fungicides in an adequate water volume or water it in - see Lane's fairy ring profile here, as well as Mike Fidanza's water volume and surfactant work here.

As mentioned in previous postings - using the magic plastic bag to see where the fairy ring is in the soil (near the surface or way down in the soil) can help you judge how far you need to push your fungcides into the soil profile with water to get good control.


In the photo above - you can see the white fairy ring mycelia in this sample (incubated overnight in a sealed plastic box) poking out from the soil (on the side of the plug) up to a few inches down from the surface. in this case - you'd know that you'd need to get the fungicide down to this level to get adequate control.

OK - that's it for this week. I'm back in DC after a week in sunny California, good thing the snow is finally melted here!

Signing off from the Right Coast....