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Turf diseases to be aware of

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Turf diseases to be aware of: Summer is here and with it are several turf diseases to be aware of.  Here’s a guide to dealing with a few of them.

Anthracnose is a stress disease, so combining any 2 or 3 of several potential stresses can encourage the disease.  Common stresses include lowering of height of cut, low N inputs, heat, extremes of soil moisture, high thatch, aggressive verticutting, high wear, etc.

Turf diseases to be aware of

Turf diseases to be aware of

Symptoms within a sward are patches of irregular, yellow/brown/bronze-coloured patches and a loss of turf density. Foliar blight-affected leaves lose colour to become a yellow colour and black spots containing fruiting bodies (acervuli) can be seen on the leaves.

The three biggest factors in anthracnose development are mowing height, deficiencies of N or K (mainly N) and poor control over soil moisture.  Avoid these three and your chances of avoiding anthracnose are greatly increased.  Keep green speeds up by applying slow-release N to maintain turf health without excess growth.  I recommend high potassium liquids in nearly all my golf green recommendations throughout summer to help keep anthracnose at bay as higher levels of K in the leaf reduce anthracnose.  It’s also a good idea to add in phosphite and salicylic acid with your foliar mixes.  Both work in a similar fashion by ‘tricking’ the plant into thinking it’s under attack from a pathogen and increasing its defences.

Consistent moisture levels across the whole surface are important in preventing Localised Dry Spots and anthracnose, so use of a soil moisture meter and hand watering is crucial.  Maintain a good wetting agent programme to maintain consistent soil moisture across your site.

Take-All Patch affects golf greens and you probably won’t see symptoms until later in the summer, but you can prevent it now.  For those on Take-All prone sites:  get a good programme of biostimulants in place employing seaweeds, amino acids and humic acids.

Light straw-coloured circular patches become visible that have a well-defined edge between healthy and infected turf.  They may have a bronze tinge around the edge when the disease is active.  These may be slightly depressed and contain unaffected species or weeds in the centre

Low soil manganese levels are often associated with this disease as the pathogen oxidizes available Mn2+ to Mn3+ or Mn4+, making it unavailable to the plant; extra manganese inputs have been shown to be effective in reducing symptoms.  High pH soils are also more vulnerable.

On sites who traditionally suffer badly, two applications of azoxystrobin 2 weeks apart in early summer, and then again in late August will help.  Combine applications of azoxystrobin with a wetting agent to get the active ingredient down into the soil where it’s needed.

Be aware of Waitea Patch during a hot spell.  Hydrophobic layers are a factor with this disease, therefore moisture and thatch management are key.  With modern moisture meters you can really track soil moisture levels very accurately and watch the VMC% drop and then treating with a hand water and surfactant hose end pellets to keep moisture consistent.

With a Poa annua sward, turf shows symptoms of coalescing yellow rings around 20-40cm in diameter.  There is often (but not always) darker green turf in the centre of the ring.  The disease affects the leaves, stem, crown and upper roots and if it gets to advanced stages will turn leaves a brown/red colour and kill plants.  Very similar in appearance to Superficial Fairy Rings, but Waitea does not have the mushroom smell or mycelium below the surface associated with Superficial Fairy Rings.  Waitea Patch can develop mycelium on the leaves, crown and soil surface, but not sub-surface.

The big difference between Waitea and Superficial Fairy Ring is smell: fairy rings give off a distinct mushroom smell when you take out a core and have good sniff.  Waitea Patch does not smell anywhere close as strong of mushrooms, if at all.  Mycelium can develop on the surface with Waitea Patch, but below the surface with Superficial Fairy Rings and is usually reasonably easy to spot with Fairy Rings (take a core and put it into a ziplocked, soil sampling bag to incubate for 24 hours to see where mycelium develops if uncertain).

Superficial Fairy Ring always have some element of hydrophobic soil associated with them – Waitea CAN have hydrophobic soil too, but it will be likely be completely unrelated to the disease.

With Waitea Patch you need to try to reduce surface moisture (i.e. don’t hand water it!) and with Superficial Fairy Rings you’ll need to break that hydrophobicity with a wetter and get moisture back into the soil (i.e. hand water it with a hose and wetting agent pellet!).

Geoff Fenn BSc (Hons)

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Fresh confidence for Festival of Turf

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Fresh confidence for Festival of Turf: The British & International Golf Greenkeepers Association has reaffirmed its commitment to hosting a new trade exhibition that will allow golf greenkeepers, groundsmen and the wider turf industry to get together in a COVID-safe environment and enjoy two fantastic days of networking, innovation and entertainment.

Although the delay to the lifting of lockdown restrictions announced on Tuesday 14 June wasn’t the news anyone was hoping for, BIGGA is pleased that the new date facilitates the successful staging of the Festival of Turf.

Fresh confidence for Festival of Turf

Fresh confidence for Festival of Turf

The golf industry has faced significant challenges relating to COVID-19 over the past 15 months and BIGGA has been at the forefront of discussions relating to safety measures, essential maintenance guidelines and the eventual reopening of the game. Likewise, the Festival of Turf was formulated as an exhibition that could be hosted in a safe manner for all involved. BIGGA has worked closely with specialist contractors throughout the design and planning stages to ensure safety for all who attend, as well as ensuring the event will comply with any regulations that may be in place. A combination of outdoor and indoor exhibition space alongside other measures such as enhanced cleaning, pre-registration and social distancing measures will ensure a safe exhibition experience for all.

Numerous conversations with both BIGGA members and those on the commercial side of the business over the past year made it clear that there was a real appetite to host a physical event this summer. Such an event would allow everyone to reunite and share their experiences, as well as discover what new innovations BIGGA’s commercial supporters – both old and new – have developed in the past year or so. Although the lifting of restrictions has been delayed, this appetite remains and the Festival of Turf has been warmly received across the sports and amenity turf industries, with exhibitors hurrying to book up the available space and exclusive product launches planned for the event.

Registration for the Festival of Turf is open and available via the BIGGA website.

A video explaining more about the Festival of Turf is available to watch and embed on YouTube.

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Reduce the effects of exhaust emissions

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Reduce the effects of exhaust emissions: You may think that if you’re operating petrol-powered equipment, particularly in poorly ventilated spaces, that exposure to harmful hydrocarbons is largely unavoidable.

Benzene is just one of the many hydrocarbons found in conventional pump fuel and exhaust emissions, often considered the substance most dangerous to human health. However, there is an alternative in the form of Aspen Alkylate petrol – switching to which can reduce benzene emissions by up to 108 times!

Reduce the effects of exhaust emissions

Reduce the effects of exhaust emissions

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH) regulations advise against benzene exposure completely, but where this cannot be reasonably achieved, there are steps that can be taken to adequately control exposure as far as is reasonably practicable – and certainly below the workplace exposure limit (WEL) assigned for benzene of part per million (ppm) of air averaged over an 8-hour period. One way of doing this could be switching from traditional pump fuel to Aspen.

An Alkylate petrol, Aspen is made using only the cleanest Alkylate components that occur when oil is refined. This process involves combining excess gases from the distillation of crude oil and from the cracking plant, resulting in a liquid alkylate. Once some additional components are mixed in, the result is a finished fuel which is significantly purer than traditional petrol, with content of harmful aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene and polyaromatics (PAH) close to zero.

Being virtually free from benzene, as well as sulphur and many other harmful substances, using Aspen Alkylate petrol improves the health and performance of your equipment, the working conditions for the operator and significantly reduces the harmful impact your machinery makes on the environment. Aspen is also ethanol-free, which improves reliability, maintains engine performance and preserves the life of component parts which can be susceptible to failure when running on conventional pump fuel, especially if it has been left for any extended period of time in storage.

Aspen is available in a range of unit sizes (5L, 25L, 60L and 200L) and in both pre-mixed 2-stroke and 4-stroke varieties.

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Unrivalled lightness of cut

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Unrivalled lightness of cut: Toro’s Reelmaster 3575-D is the lightest available cylinder mower in its class, bringing an unrivalled lightness of cut to pitches, training grounds and academies.

Designed to be 20 percent lighter than traditional larger cylinder mowers, Toro’s Reelmaster 3575-D weighs just 2550lbs including the cutting units – that’s 500lbs less than comparable four-wheel mowers – to decrease turf compaction and bring a superior quality of cut even in wet conditions.

Unrivalled lightness of cut

Unrivalled lightness of cut

Not only that though, this machine has been designed with a front-to-back and side-to-side balance of weight to produce a low centre of gravity and has a large footprint, which, when combined with turf-friendly tyres, reduces turf damage.

Since its launch in 2019, football clubs like Manchester City have trusted the Reelmaster 3575-D to improve turf quality without sacrificing productivity and they’ve taken fairway cutting at golf clubs to a new level, too.

Alastair Rowell, UK sales manager for turfcare equipment at Reesink Turfcare, the sole Toro distributor in the UK for golf and sports fields equipment, explains: “This machine was designed to bring more choice to the lightweight fairway mower market – in fact, you could say it revolutionised it, and it didn’t take groundscare customers long to realise that this would bring new benefits into their mowing of stadium pitches, training grounds, and academies too.

“The three-wheel drive system helps with the tight turns at the ends of the pitch and brings impressive traction to hilly cutting areas. The 100-inch width of cut means productivity comes as standard making light work of your cutting duties.”

The Reelmaster 3575-D is available with five inch or seven inch cutting units and will be sure to make an impression on the pitch without leaving one. Call Reesink Turfcare on 01480 226800 or visit reesinkturfcare.co.uk to find out more.

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Rise of the SuperBents

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Rise of the SuperBents: Germinal’s Paul Moreton explains that the latest generation of creeping bentgrasses are ideal for British greens thanks to their natural disease tolerance and ability to thrive in a range of climatic conditions.

The popularity of modern creeping bentgrasses – or ‘SuperBents’ as they are commonly referred to – is the result of an intensive breeding programme which led to the development of 007 DSB (named after the year it was released, 2007, not the fictional British Secret Service agent).

Rise of the SuperBents

Rise of the SuperBents

Bred using genetics from 24 parent plants collected from old putting greens located in cooler, northern locations in the US, 007 DSB is the cultivar of choice on a number of courses which have hosted major golf tournaments in climates where winter temperatures average well below 0oC.

007 DSB has proven to be the perfect fit in these cool conditions, not only thanks to its fineness of leaf, fast rolling speed, enhanced disease resistance and low input requirements, but also because of its significantly shorter growing-in period which enables greenkeepers to quickly and easily produce a tournament-ready putting surface.

In contrast to previous creeping bents which were developed primarily to withstand close mowing, the new generation of SuperBents has been bred to be tolerant of lower inputs of N and water: the ability of varieties such as 007 DSB and more recently Tour Pro (GDE) to thrive without excessive inputs makes them ideally suited for use on UK courses where their vigorous lateral growth and persistence to very close mowing enables greenkeepers to utilise them on greens to outcompete Poa annua without the need to drastically change any cultural practices.

In the last few years, numerous UK clubs have successfully over-seeded their greens with 007 DSB and in doing so have created more aesthetically pleasing greens which, crucially, are naturally more resistant to both Anthracnose and Microdochium patch: an ever-increasingly important factor given the loss of curative fungicides such as Iprodione.

For these clubs, regular ‘preventative overseeding’ using a SuperBent has enabled them to introduce young, healthy and vibrant new growth into the sward and to boost the natural ability of their greens to resist disease in a cost-effective and sustainable way.

At Germinal, we saw the potential of these leading cultivars from a very early stage and have been leading the push to use SuperBents in the UK. At first the market for creeping bents remained relatively subdued due to a natural tendency for greenkeepers to be wary of making any significant changes and because older varieties were input-hungry and couldn’t perform to the level attained by the new generation.

Despite this initial market hesitancy, we stood by our decision to bring the likes of 007 DSB and TourPro (GDE) to the UK based on the knowledge that, put simply, they both possess traits which can help greenkeepers to manage their greens more efficiently and effectively.

The dated stigmas and false clichés about creeping bentgrasses being difficult and expensive to manage are no longer representative of the new generation. Similarly, the misconception that greens maintenance regimes will need to a total re-vamp to accommodate SuperBents is simply untrue.

In fact, a recent survey has shown that many users have reduced their nitrogen input since switching to SuperBents, with no requirement for any additional dethatching or greens grooming required to maintain the SuperBent sward.

The positive feedback from these clubs will hopefully give other course managers in the UK the confidence to introduce a creeping bent cultivar to their over-seeding regime, and thereby enable them to embrace the natural disease resistance of this new generation of cultivars.