Crown hydration, Poa seedheads, and other headaches

Here we are only a few days away from May and we are dealing with all sorts of problems in the Northeast. I just got off the phone with a superintendent in Connecticut who is dealing with some dead grass due to the crazy weather we have had. In his case, a late season freeze following some heavy rains resulted in some serious crown hydration problems. Although I don't have any photos to share (not that he would want them out there), the solution that we both agreed on was a good pummeling. His greens are nearly 100% Poa and we decided that disturbing the soil as much as possible to create a seedbed (there is probably millions of seed in his seedbank) is the best bet to get green turf as soon as possible. We are fortunate that it looks like decent temperatures for growing grass should be here for a while (unless all of the sudden it goes right to summer).

Within the last few weeks, we were also able to rate our snow mold trials. Rather than go into too much detail about this, I have posted our final report and a pdf of the individual treatment images in my dropbox file (link) . Feel free to download them, but they won't be up there forever. Instead the report will be moved to the Penn State site once we can get it uploaded. Other than recovery from the typical winter problems, I have already started hearing rumblings about the following diseases being active: anthracnose, brown ring patch, fairy ring, yellow patch (aka., cool temperature brown patch), microdochium patch, and probably others that I forgot to mention.

What most people have on their mind right now is 1) the success of the Poa seedhead programs and 2) the start if they haven't already started of the early season dollar spot treatments. Due to weather problems, we didn't get our early season trials out until yesterday, but our seedhead trials (applied at various timings between 200 and 500 GDD) have all gone out already. We are just now starting to see some seedheads, but ratings probably won't tell us much until this week or next. If you have any thoughts or input on what you are seeing or how your Poa seedhead treatments worked out for you, please pass them along in the comments or on the Turf Diseases Facebook Page.

Finally, if you were wondering about my South Africa post, I just got my computer back last week and haven't had a chance to upload my pics. I hope to get to them this week so the post can hit this weekend. Good thing that Dr. Woods gave us a great International Disease Post last weekend.

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.

Let's get this season started...

Disease activity has been slowly increasing throughout the northeast as we are halfway through the month of May.  Poa seedheads are also causing problems with turf quality on putting greens and fairways where suppression failed.  Dollar spot has been the biggest buzz around the area as it started in some places at least 2 weeks ago.  In State College, we have yet to see any dollar spot but our fungicide trials are going out ASAP in anticipation of symptoms this week or next.

Fungicide trials:

On the Facebook page, some made jokes about diseases magically disappearing once a pathologist puts a trial out at your course.  I (and probably all authors here) have had first hand experience with this over the past few years with trials put out on golf courses.  I had this happen with fairy ring and anthracnose trials in CT and now brown ring patch at Penn State.  In one BRP trial the disease was extremely severe last year and didn't even make an appearance in my preventive trials this year.  We were lucky enough to have an early-curative trial go out at Bucknell Golf Club and we did get some data after the first week of treatments.  When we returned last week for our sequential application, however, the disease was all but gone.  We put out the treatments anyway and will see if the weather changes and brings some symptoms back.

The natural lack of disease pressure on golf courses, however, is much better than dealing with mistakes.  There is nothing more frustrating than putting out several weeks of treatments only to have the spray tech forget to skip your study with the tank-mix of fungicides...oops!  Luckily I have not had this happen in ANY of my trials on golf courses which is a testament to all of the golf course superintendents that allow us to create checkerboards of dead and healthy grass on their greens and fairways. 

One final word on Poa seedheads:

There were varying reports of success (and failure) with seedhead control this year in the Northeast.  This is really no different than any year and it always seems to come down to timing.  For us, we applied various treatments on April 1 and when seedheads finally started to show up, we saw that the best suppression was being provided by Embark.  Our Primo + Proxy treatments did suppress the seedheads to some degree, but not to what I would consider an acceptable level.  One problem with the Embark is the amount of injury we saw to the turf.  Whether it was from the strange temperature fluctuations or the late frosts, the turf didn't look so good for a few weeks.  Recovery is finally starting to become apparent now (about 3-4 weeks after the application), but it will be interesting to see the long term impact of the treatments on turf quality throughout the year.

 Poa seedheads were effectively suppressed with Embark (both rates)

Severe injury to the turf was observed in both the fairway and putting green trials

Other diseases:
Anthracnose continues to be a problem on annual bluegrass putting greens.  Brown ring patch has generally disappeared around Central PA, but reports of it on golf courses in the region continue.  Leaf spot has also picked up in the rough on many golf courses.  Red thread is slowly starting to make its appearance in higher cut turf.  Conditions for turfgrass growth are very good right now and it is likely that some areas that yet to be fertilized thus far will show the greatest signs of red thread (and dollar spot if you haven't seen it yet).

The trip from hell and current disease issues

For those of you following my twitter or facebook account, you probably already know that I had been stuck in Europe for the past two weeks. While I often heard comments like "there are worse places to be stuck" and "I wish I were stuck in Paris", the actuality of it is that the snowball effect of being stuck in Europe was not fun (although I will admit that Paris is now one of my favorite cities in the world). More on my travel problems below.

...as for the turf issues happening now.

While away, it was apparently back to some cooler weather around the region, but things are definitely starting to look more like spring around here each day. Annual bluegrass seedheads seem to be in full bloom and ratings taken last week confirmed that certain treatments can be effective at suppressing the seedheads when properly timed. I will mention that we did see quite a bit of damage as well from some treatments.

In addition to Poa seedheads, brown ring patch seems to be rearing its ugly head again this year. Remember to follow recommendations of found in previous posts to control the disease. Another chronic disease that is active in certain parts of the northeast is anthracnose basal rot. A sample was received today from a golf course that was showing active conidia (spores) of the anthracnose pathogen. I noticed reports of this disease a few weeks back, but believe that most have gotten it under control. This is definitely good news and cases of anthracnose starting this early definitely is not a good sign going into the season. When cases start extremely early (right after snow melt) we usually see things clear up and not persist throughout the year. When cases start showing up in May and June, then the disease seems to last all summer long and cause the most problems.

Early season dollar spot treatments should have been applied in most regions within the past 2 weeks as well. I have not kept up with what is happening in all regions, but at least from what I can see in State College, PA things have been considerably dry and we have even seen some drought damage starting to appear on putting greens. It seems a little early and many of you will push the limits early in the season in order to pre-condition the plants to the stress, but be careful not to go too far as damage has been observed this year.  Of course, rain over this weekend and early this week make the last few sentences a mute point.

As for my time in Europe...

Once the volcano in Iceland started sending ash everywhere all hell broke loose with regards to travel in Northern Europe. Flights were canceled across the board in what they called the worse air traffic problem; surpassing 9/11. In my attempt to get back to the states in reasonable time frame, I was shuttled from Paris to Amsterdam, back to Paris and then to Madrid. This involved about 10 hours in line at train stations, gouging in terms of pricing of hotels, and many hours on the trains. Finally, when we thought all was squared away we got stuck in Montpellier, France because the French train workers were on strike. We ended up renting a car and driving over 900 km through the night to arrive in Madrid at about 3AM on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. We finally made it out of Europe and back to the US at about 11PM Thursday night. For all of you hearing about the situation on the news...I can first hand say that it was worse than you could imagine!  Lesson learned though...when travel troubles like this occur in the future, you can bet that I will just find a seat in a nice street cafe in Paris and relax.  Chasing the travel only made things more stressful and didn't really get me home any sooner!

At least I got to see some cool things while in Paris:

It's Gettin Hot in Here...

The weather this week basically got the season kicked into high gear in a fast way. Everyone seems to be out mowing turf and actually get substantial growth. If you are farther south (Virginia and Maryland for this blogger) then things almost seem like you are in early summer mode. The weather this season is almost as unusual as the winter last season. In State College, we had our first snow on October 15th and things didn't really look back.

Below: image from the earliest snow storm in State College, PA history (October 15, 2009).

Now we are only in early April and temps have been in the mid 70's to low 80's and I am not sure what impact this will have on the turf this year. Based on some observations around the area, annual bluegrass weevils are moving, annual bluegrass seedhead treatments are going out, and early season dollar spot applications are just around the corner. This week I posted a poll (top right of the blog) and it seems that the verdict is still out with regards to when seedhead controls should be applied. So far there is a tie between those of you checking the boot stage and those of you using the degree day 50 model to time your applications. In State College, we are at 89.5 GDD this year, but I have yet to see the boot stage of annual bluegrass much less any actual seedheads. I am sure some of you have already started to see them, but I haven't yet. Although seedhead control doesn't seem to be very related to disease activity, the work coming out of Rutgers showed that controlling seedheads and then following up with Primo applications did not increase anthracnose activity and in some years even resulted in a slight reduction in disease severity. This is a question that I get a lot at this time of year because anthracnose is active throughout the region on some courses.

As I mentioned, early season dollar spot is an area gaining considerable interest among golf course superintendents and there is no shortage of controversy among pathologists either. My lab has been conducting studies on the early season control of dollar spot since 2005 and it does appear to be effective at suppressing the pathogen early in the season (See the old blog post for more info). Differences, however, have been observed in effective fungicides among geographic regions (Jim pointed this out in this post). So, although there is not an exact science with regards to these applications, here are my thoughts (for what its worth):

1. Early season applications can be applied around the second true mowing.
2. Early season fungicide applications reduce inoculum and/or delay the onset of the disease.
3. I don't care which fungicide you use as long as you pick one that you know works for dollar spot at your course.
4. There may not be a huge difference in the level of control you see from these applications when compared to a more traditionally timed (~late May), but "anecdotal" evidence suggests that these applications may reduce the severity of the disease later in the year (more work to come).
5. There is no need for these applications unless you experience chronic, difficult to control dollar spot symptoms during  the year.
6. Don't delay/reduce/stretch fungicide applications if conditions favorable for dollar spot exist in the fall.  We have seen many cases of "disease resurgence" where dollar spot within treated areas becomes more severe than in areas that had never received an application.  This is often where we see the fall pitting type of dollar spot.

So, that's about it for this week.  I would try to write more, but it is pretty difficult to type with only 9 fingers...especially when the missing finger is also my "backspace" and "enter" finger on the keyboard.  In case you missed the story this Easter weekend, I nearly lost the tip of a finger while staining my deck.  I know, this is absurd and I hear even the folks at GCSAA headquarters were getting a laugh around the water cooler with this story.  If you REALLY want to SEE what happened, feel free to check out the images here, but I warn you that they are a little gross!

Signing off from the right coast (and with only 9 fingers)...

...to hear the inspiration for the blog title click here.

Microdochium patch kicking in

Walking around the Valentine Research Facility this morning brought some new disease activity to my attention.  Despite the unseasonably warm weather we had this past week, the slight change in temperatures and moisture finally kicked Microdochium patch into gear on our putting greens.  Although most of the damage that we had noticed prior was caused by gray snow mold, this was brand new activity.  Actually, when I first looked at the symptoms it reminded me of some type of hydraulic or fuel spill.  It was fairly scattered and not too severe at this point, but microscopic examination confirmed the condia (spores) of Microdochium nivale.  I assume that the wet, weather we are scheduled to get over the next two days (combined with more typical temperatures for the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern US) will bring some moderate cases of the disease.  There are probably a lot of fungicides that can control the disease, but it seems that most are utilizing tank-mixtures of chlorothalonil + iprodione as their drug of choice.



In addition to the Microdochium, we have seen select cases of cool temperature brown patch and brown ring patch.  As we have stated in previous posts, identification can be made by incubating a sample in a ziplock bag or tupperware container with a moist paper towel.  If mycelium is present in the morning, you are likely dealing with brown ring patch.  It seems a little early for BRP in most parts of the NE, but with the weather being so screwed up for the last week anything is possible.

Aside from the disease front, many of you may have read the facebook post about annual bluegrass weevils.  According to the USGA agronomists in the Northeast, adult annual bluegrass weevils are already on the move and have been captured in pitfall traps on a golf course in Fairfield, CT.  This is once again early for the little buggers and superintendents would be wise to keep a close eye on this if you have 1) high populations of annual bluegrass and 2) have had a history of ABW damage in the past.  For those of you not dealing with this insect, take it from many of the golf course superintendents in the Hartford region...they are a pain in the rear and resistance problems showing up in the last 4-5 years have made their management even more difficult.

Aside from the bugs and the fungi, now is also the time to start planning for your annual bluegrass seedhead control.  Depending on your choice of PGR (Embark or Primo/Proxy), you will be targeting the seedheads soon.  These control measures are often hit or miss and can vary significantly depending on the location on the course.  As you know, many superintendents base their application timing on cumulative degree days.  Although I still don't think these are great models, they can assist in determining approximate timings.  For everyone in the NE, you can check out Cornell's Forecast site for an update on cumulative degree days.

Brown Ring Patch or Yellow Patch?

Disease activity is relatively slow at this point, but there are some reasons to believe that this will change soon. So far, several cases of brown ring patch and yellow patch (i.e., cool temperature brown patch) have been identified from Pennsylvania to parts of New England. A quick way to distinguish between these two diseases is to incubate a cup-cutter plug in a tuperware container overnight. If mycelium is present in the morning, you are likely dealing with brown ring patch as yellow patch does not produce much visible mycelium.

Main areas of interest throughout the region have focused on annual bluegrass seedhead suppression and the application of early season fungicides for the control of dollar spot or fairy ring. In situations where chronic disease activity occurs, these early season fungicide applications have been shown to reduce the severity of each disease later in the year.

If you are in the Northeast and experiencing other disease problems, feel free to let us know in the comments section.