Things are picking up FAST!

Yesterday (this was meant for yesterday, but new disease activity today [Tuesday] has me posting a day late) I had the pleasure of hanging out at the Rutger's Annual Golf Classic which raises funds for their research program. I even got to play a little golf with our Midwest blogger Jim Kerns. Having left State College on Sunday and not really seeing much of anything on the disease front at Penn State, I was excited to find out if there were any actual turf diseases in the field...we hit the jackpot in North Jersey.

While certain diseases like anthracnose, leaf spot and brown ring patch were very active, I was surprised to see active dollar spot and RECOVERING brown patch (looked like it was active about a week ago or so). I think that things have been some moist and humid that everything is just taking off at this point. This would definitely be the earliest I have ever seen brown patch in the mid-Atlantic region and is in general pretty early for dollar spot as well.

Thatch collapse

This morning I headed into the Valentine research facility in State College and was surprised to see a LOT of disease activity there as well. We still don't have any dollar spot and brown patch is definitely a ways off for us, but there are several things going on. First, seedheads are in full force right now and we will be rating our plots over the next few weeks to see what worked and at what timing. As for diseases we are seeing: red thread, leaf spot, brown ring patch (images below, we are confirming by isolation...update to come), thatch collapse (see next month's GCM issue), Microdochium patch, and probably something else that I am forgetting.

So diseases are here or just around the corner...we could be in for another long year.