 |
This spring, disease mitigation and management are complex issues because of the mild climate that much of the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions enjoyed for during Winter 2015-16. That’s both a blessing and a curse for superintendents preparing for the start of their golf seasons, says Penn State University turf professor John Kaminski.
“We’re probably going to make it through the winter with little concern for winter-kill damage from prolonged periods of ice cover,” Kaminski says. “That’s a positive. The negative could still be, depending how moist the turf is and how many hard frosts we get later in the season … I would imagine Poa is going to come alive a little sooner than we would expect. Then you set yourself up for crown hydration so there is still the possibility for winter kill from crown hydration.”
As this feature is being written the Middle Atlantic region had already experienced periods of mild weather with temperatures in the 50s and, in some cases approaching 60. Under those conditions Poa annua will likely “green up” fairly quickly, Kaminski adds.
“The biggest challenge would be if we went back to some cold temperatures after [the turf has] woken up,” he says. “If it wakes up early and then we have cold weather coming in and wet soils you risk a high potential for crown hydration. If you make it past that and (crown hydration) doesn’t happen and then the soils continue to warm up early, we look at things like anthracnose and dollar spot starting really early for us this year.”
 |
Just the mention of “dollar spot” attracts attention and raises the blood pressure of superintendents across North America. Due to the mild weather the pathogen is likely to appear earlier than usual this season.
“In our area, dollar spot is like clockwork,” Kaminski says of Penn State’s home in State College, Pa., “It’s like May 28th or 29th. But a couple years ago we had an early spring and it was a month early, May 4th it started showing up.”
Mild temperatures in late February and early March could be a prelude to a hard frost later in March, or perhaps a situation in which a March rain freezes, leaving the turf under a sheet of ice, Kaminksi says. But those scenarios are unlikely this spring, he says.
“I think more likely what’s going to happen,” Kaminski says, “If Punxsutawney Phil is right and we do have an early spring, insect cycles are going to start earlier. If people are going on a calendar year and not on the actual weather and predictions, they could miss something like ABW and miss their window of opportunity for application for that, or they could get caught with early outbreaks of things like anthracnose and dollar spot. The last thing you want to do is have a severe outbreak early in the season that catches you off guard because then you’ll probably be battling high populations of that pathogen all season long.
The “dollar spot window” has opened wider since he began his career at Rutgers more than three decades ago, says Rutgers University turf pathologist Dr. Bruce Clarke.
“When I first came to Rutgers, dollar spot developed around Memorial Day,” Clarke says. “I used to say that it was a very patriotic disease. I knew if I took a day off around then that when I came back to work it would always be developing. But in the past 10-15 years, the past 10 years especially, we’ve seen dollar spot developing much earlier than Memorial Day. It’s not unusual now for dollar spot to develop during the first or second week of May, in some cases even in the second or third week of April.”
Even more impressive, Clarke says dollar spot is developing later in the fall than it typically has, with December 2015 as a prime example.
“We had what many would consider to be unusually warm weather late into the fall into December,” he says. “We had conditions that were very conducive to dollar spot and in fact, had a major dollar-spot outbreak close to New Year’s, which I think is very unusual in most people’s minds but it’s becoming more commonplace later and later in the all, It used to be dollar spot (typically) peaked in mid-to-late October, Now, we regularly see it in November depending on the year and (in 2015) we saw it right to the end of December.”
 |
In recent years, many of the superintendents Clarke works have been adjusting their application programs to account for mild late-winter/early spring conditions. And while he emphasizes that every year is different when it comes to weather conditions, Clarke says it’s important to pay attention to emerging trends.
“Some years, you may have a very cold spring and say ‘So much for global warming.’” Clark says. “But, if you look at what the last five or six years have been like, or the last 10 years, and start looking at these by decade, I think you start seeing a shift toward these diseases developing a little bit earlier.”
The expanding spring and fall seasons are forcing superintendents to do some innovative fiscal calisthenics so they have the products they need throughout the season while still making their budgets work.
“In the fall, people’s budgets are stressed,” Kaminski says, “and they start stretching their application intervals and they get caught. When they resurgence occurs sometime in August or September it takes of and it’s really difficult to control once you have a severe outbreak.
“There is a lot of thought that … something different is happening in the fall. I’m not sure I believe that, I think it’s just a change in maintenance practices. Budgets are spent, people are tired and with the extended season they wind up extending their intervals to the point that they get caught behind the eight ball.”
Kaminski says superintendents should factor extended seasons into their budget planning. “ When you start doing budget planning for the next year, anticipate that seasons seem to be getting longer,” he says, “or that there is high variability in what you need to do during the season.
“Adjust for that in your requests, in terms of fungicides, and insecticides too. What may have been a $100,000 program typically may be now, because of the problems we’re seeing, be a $120-125,000 program. It’s a tough battle to sell.”
Kaminski says it’s important for club presidents and green chairs to be aware of the realities of what their superintendents are dealing with.
“The seasons do seemed to be prolonged or extended on both sides," he says. “The shoulders of the seasons seem to be longer which means you might end up with two or three additional required sprays. Unless the club wants to lower their standards or thresholds for these particular diseases, they’re going to have to budget for those additional sprays.
To me it seems like an easy sell. If it does warm up early or stay warm late people want to be out there playing golf. If you want that to be on turf that is healthy you’re going to have to budget for it.”
Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based turf writer and frequent GCI contributor.
