Turf Line News

September 2012

Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/82830

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 23 of 47

RESEARCH NEWS BY JASON HAINES FUSARIUM PATCH OBSERVATIONS ON ROLLING AND GOLF TEES SHOW THE FUSARIUM PATCHES ON THE CONTROL PLOT (NEVER ROLLED EVER) The following is a summary of my many blog posts about my observations about rolling and fusarium patch. The entire detailed articles can be found at penderharbourgolf.blogspot.ca. This spring I initiated a small study to see what (if any) impact lightweight rolling had on silvery thread moss populations on Poa annua putting green turf. I used a small chipping green in our practice area and divided it into plots with different daily rolling frequencies of 0-8x daily. In late May I observed that the plots that were rolled had less fusarium than the plots that were never rolled. I collected the data and sent it into Dr. Larry Stowell at PACE Turf to be statistically analyzed. The following chart illustrates what effects rolling had on fusarium patch incidence on my putting greens in late May. Obviously I was pretty excited about my findings. Until then I hadn't heard of any cultural practices that I could do that effectively controlled fusarium during periods of cool wet weather. The only effective control for fusarium has always been fungicides and I am always looking for ways to reduce my pesticide use. I hypothesize that rolling has a similar mode of action on fusarium as it does with Dollar spot by increasing the beneficial microbial populations in the soil. I have no way to prove this on my site though. It could have been a number of things such as dew/guttation removal and bulk density of the soil. Clearly more scientific study is required. Based on my observations of both disease incidence and turfgrass quality on my rolling trial putting Continued On Page 27 Poa annua rolled 8x daily with a HOC of 0.090" during full seed head flush with only 2 hrs of sunlight/day. Whoa! do you see what I see? Where's the seedhead? Oh snap! 24 WESTERN CANADA TURFGRASS ASSOCIATION ROLLED 1X'S PER DAY ROLLED 4X'S PER DAY

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of Turf Line News - September 2012