Leaf spot, Waitea, and growth...

Today I attended Rutger's Annual Turfgrass Research Tournament at Fiddler's Elbow in Northern New Jersey (Image courtesy hunter-pr.com).  The event was again a great one which raises a lot of money to support ongoing research projects.  Congratulations to Bruce Clarke and all of the faculty and staff for putting together a great event.  Although the event was great, the purpose of me bringing this up was that this was the first time that I felt summer was close.  While on the course, we experienced a few rain showers and the humidity was finally kicking up.  The only thing that many of the turf pathologists present could think of was, "This is the start of disease season."

Flooding at the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee and throughout Nashville has been extensive.

Although the Northeastern United States has not had the considerable amount of rain that the people in Nashville have experienced, the late evening thunderstorms followed by temperatures continuing to climb towards 80F are prime for diseases.  Luckily, the nighttime temperatures are still predicted to remain in the 50's throughout the week with the weather channel reporting lows in the upper 40's for Philadelphia by the weekend. Similar nightly temps are predicted for those farther north in the Boston, MA region, but daily highs look like they are going to stay below 70 which should make for some decent growing conditions.

In the field we have been seeing increased cases of brown ring patch (waitea patch), leaf spot in some of the roughs, and continuing problems with anthracnose.  I suspect that we are still a few weeks away from dollar spot for much of the reason, but these conditions are causing many to get an itchy trigger finger with the sprayer.  Since dollar spot is such a problem, I don't blame you, but you should still have some time before the conditions really get going for this disease.  Reports from the Facebook page indicate that many of you are seeing excellent growing conditions and that the recent rains may even have you scrambling to get your roughs mowed to a playable height.  These conditions, however, have been excellent for those of you who timed your aerification right and recovery is now happening at a fast pace.

Other than that, not much chatter is happening around the region as everyone is probably in full swing with their season.  I suspect that it will be at least a month before the calls really start to roll in regarding problems in the field. In the meantime, enjoy the nice growing conditions and relatively healthy turf.