Fairy ring used to be a big threat to superintendent Ralph Kepple’s greens at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. But after the conversion from MiniVerde Bermuda to Crenshaw creeping bentrgrass in 2008 and the next season came around clean, he thought he’d seen the last of it.
A few seasons later, it was showing up again not only on his greens, but also attacking his fairways.
“For the first two years, we didn’t have any issues at all,” says Kepple. “The third year, we started seeing some again. It got pretty severe as we got toward the tour championship.”
It started out slow, but the more the greens dried out in prep for the championship, the more the fairy ring popped up, says Kepple. But that problem only showed up on a few greens around the course. The real pressure was elsewhere.
“It really only hit those two greens, and only when it was dry,” he says. “Now the spots are on the fairways. Those are our worst areas now.”
Fairy ring showed up on several fairways through the course, typically with drain lines and drain basins. The following year, Kepple started up with a trifloxystrobin/triadimefon mix after the soil temperature jumped to between 55 and 60 degrees F. Each application got watered in to a two-inch depth.
“We’ll spray that at a few ounces and we’ll water it in that night,” says Kepple. “Then 28 days later, we’ll make the same application, and then we’ll do a few ProStar apps through the spring. We’ll treat the entire greens, but on the fairways, we’re targeting specific areas, where we know it’s been a problem before.
“Since we’ve done that, I won’t say we haven’t had any fairy ring, but it’s an improvement. It doesn’t seem to really affect us until we get close to tournament weather and we’re drying down again.”
This year, the wet winter and spring haven’t brought up the soil temperatures necessary for heavy fairy ring pressure at East Lake, but Kepple is keeping a close eye on those trouble spots as the season heats up. After doing his applications on the greens, his team used the leftover to take care of those areas where he’s seen fairy ring pressure before on the fairway.
“We’re trying to catch it early,” he says. “Once you get behind it, it’s pretty difficult to get rid of. But if you can stay ahead of it, it’s not that bad and you can keep it from really showing itself. Hopefully we won’t see it at all this year.”