A Blog and Disease Update

So far the summer has been very busy for all of us and I personally apologize for not posting as much as I would like. You would think that posting an update a week would be easy, but it is once again proving difficult with all of the research, internship visits, website development and other things that I am currently working on. The good news is that we are rolling out several new bloggers to the site in the next month. I will let them introduce themselves in their first post as Dr. Damon Smith did in his first post from Oklahoma. We are also working on a redesign and launch of a more substantial website (not sure of a roll out date, but at this rate it will be in 2012) which will provide even more information about turfgrass diseases and likely some other areas of focus. So look for that in the future and in the meantime please welcome our new bloggers as they start to post!

In terms of diseases around the region, there is still a lot of talk about the etiolation of bentgrass on putting greens in the mid-Atlantic (and other areas as well). While there have been reports of a bacteria found in association of these symptoms there are as many reports of the symptoms being present without any bacteria found. The bottom line is that the verdict is still out regarding the cause of these symptoms and the impact that this will have as we move closer to the middle of the summer. While I am still skeptical about topic as a whole, I concur that if you are experiencing these symptoms you should perform basic cultural practices to minimize stress as if you had bacterial wilt. These include:

• Raising mowing heights
• Utilization of a dedicated mower for the affected greens
• Mowing when the greens are dry
• Maintaining greens as dry as possible
• Avoiding abrasive cultural practices (e.g., topdressing, vertical mowing, etc)
• While there are no real control measures for BW, the use of Copper-based fungicides may help a little.

Additional diseases that are appearing at this time include your typical brown patch and dollar spot, an unusual basidiomycete associated with what has been called "thatch collapse" (image right), anthracnose, fairy ring, root pythium and probably others that I am forgetting. In general, this is the time when most of our summer diseases start kicking it into high gear.

For more information on Bacteria , you can visit a search I did on this blog.