Blue Skies, Nothing But Blue Skies...

The last post focused on my final thoughts on snow mold and since then the weather in the Upper Midwest has been great! We have had a very early spring. This is good for the golf industry because golfers have been able to play golf! The last couple of weekends have not been nice, but at least some weekday play is occurring. The TDL, my phone and email have been fairly quiet with respect to turfgrass problems. We have been very dry the last month or so and this week has been extremely windy. When I was still at NCSU, Lane used to make a very simple point to his students-What is most important to a fungus? WATER! We haven't seen or heard of a lot leaf spot development because of the dry spring. The only interesting symptoms we have seen are some unusual reddish brown rings on one of our putting greens at the OJ Noer. Upon incubation of the affected turf, we obtained a Rhizoctonia like fungus. The cultures are only a few days old, so I don't know what fungus it is yet. The reddish brown rings were a little unusual though.

Besides the development of this little anomaly, we have been busy laying out our summer fungicide trials. We have also been busy planning our summer field day, which is scheduled for July 27th. We are changing the format slightly this and we are still planning on conducting the afternoon Lawn Care Session that focuses on basic turfgrass management skills. The topics include, grass ID, weed ID, sprayer and spreader calibration and pest identification. We are kicking around having a congruent session that focuses on advanced turfgrass management skills, like soil moisture measurement and interpretation, disease diagnosis and fungicide program development and insect management. If you think this would interest you please let me know!

I think this summer will present some interesting challenges as most summers do. We also have a whole lot going on so stay tuned! Next week I will be in Lane's state for a much needed beach vacation, maybe I'll report on the turf I see there :). Before I go the picture attached to the post is a representation of one of my most favorite cities! We were out on the lake during mid-April!