Plenty of snow mold in the Northeast

View of St. Francis Links and St. Francis Bay in South Africa

Things have been very hectic around here so I have not had much of a chance to post anything in a while. Following a week long trip to South Africa (more on this next weekend), I fired up the old (actually it is only a few months old) computer to have it completely crash on me. That was about 10 days ago and I have yet to get it back. Shouldn't there be some sort of insurance on these things for lost work time. If I were running a business and relying on a single computer (luckily I have a backup) then I would be totally screwed.

Gray snow mold pressure in 2011 fungicide trials

Anyway, since coming back I have been busy putting research protocols together and also wrapping up research studies from last year. In particular, I was able to drive up to Yahnundasis Golf Club located near Utica, NY to rate my snow mold trials from last fall. Depending on your perspective this was a great year for snow mold and disease pressure was upwards of 80% in select plots. Our data is kind of perplexing as PCNB didn't really do all that much. While some plots didn't look all that good, several treatments resulted in excellent control with some even providing 100% control. This report should be up on the Penn State website relatively soon (relative in academia means by June).

Most of us are now in recovery from any problems, but I have seen several courses this year that are greening up pretty nicely and look great. It's already turning into a strange year. We have had unseasonably cold weather with individual days of extremely warm temps. Today in State College, the weather is about 75F while tomorrow is going to peak at 51F. Despite this fluctuation, our GDD at Penn State hit 289 yesterday and probably picked up several more today. Therefore at least according to the GDD we are right in the early stages of Poa seedhead control. We have a study at the Penn State Golf Course now looking at GDD timings for various products and a new experimental product. Hopefully we can get a better handle on what works in terms of timing for our region. For some reason, the GDD timing used in Michigan as part of Ron Calhoun's program doesn't seem to work well here...at least we haven't been able to dial it in. I hope to continue to put out these trials to figure out the best timing and products for our region...any feedback that you can provide regarding what works for you would be great!  If you want to learn more about Ron's GDD Tracker site, I encourage you to visit it at www.gddtracker.net. It is a great site and a valuable resource for those in his region.