*Snow-mageddon*
In honor of the arctic blast, here is another perspective on cold damage, from U of Arkansas:
http://turf.uark.edu/turfhelp/archives/011810%20winter2010.html
It's a 4-part series of websites discussing different aspects of winter damage in turf.
*Phytotoxicity and pesticide labels*
Like most of you, I have experienced the "fun" of reading pesticide labels. But, it is important for many reasons. Here's an article that reminds us of ONE particular reason why it is important:
This article talks about phytotoxicity (chemical damage) in ornamentals, but I've seen plenty of warnings on turf products as well ("do not use this product on species X or doom will follow...")
*Speaking of labels*
I came across some label news through a fruit listserv that I am on. The EPA is considering some changes to labels. In particular, they are considering changing to a web-based format where you can create a specific label that is tailored to the sites and plant species that you manage.
For example you can type in your state, a product, your type of site (golf course, for example), targeted pest (select from pull-down list), etc, and then a customized label comes up. The test-drive link is below
Here's the info (from Iowa Grape News)
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may soon be implementing a new streamlined web label distributing system that will eliminate the hardcopy label on the container. The EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) is exploring a new initiative called “Web Distributed Labeling” (WDL) that would make the most current version of pesticide labeling available to users via the Internet or phone. The EPA OPP announced its intent to put a WDL “User Acceptance Pilot” in the Federal Register on 8-18-10. The EPA OPP is asking pesticide applicators to participate in this pilot program and then tell EPA what they think of of the WDL using short survey via Survey Monkey.
This is a GREAT idea! This streamlined web distributed labeling system has a huge potential to increase the efficacy of our pesticide labeling and application technology resources that could become available at our fingertips in the field. I HIGHLY recommend you go to the WDL pilot site, view some streamlined labels and then take the short Online anonymous survey. You start out by taking a test drive here:
EPA will use the survey results to decide whether or not to move forward with web-distributed labeling."
