The plant phenological indicator for peak egglaying for hairy chinch bug is birds’foot trefoil. It is in full bloom at the moment. On the whole, if conditions continue to be as wet as they have been this spring, it bodes well for a year with less than the average amount of turf damage from insects.
Archive for June, 2013
Insect development is lagging behind
Posted in Insects on June 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Conditions still favouring foliar diseases
Posted in Diseases on June 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Because of the mix of cool and warm weather and lots of rain there are two foliar disease active at the moment on closely mowed turf on golf courses (tees and greens mainly) and those are dollar spot and Microdochium patch. For the next couple of days with the night time lows going into the single digits the pressure from Microdochium patch will continue. As the temperatures ramp up later in the week the dollar spot pressure will increase. There is no need for a fungicide application directed at the Microdochium patch because the warmer weather will bring that disease to a halt. There is a need to keep up the preventative fungicide applications for dollar spot control and continue the cultural practices that help minimize this disease such as dew removal by mowing, poling or rolling and light and frequent nitrogen applications.
Another disease which isn’t a foliar disease, but is favoured by the current weather pattern is anthracnose basal rot. Some of the cultural practices which help manage this disease are adequate nitrogen applications and spring topdressing. There is a good article on best management practices for this disease at http://usgatero.msu.edu/v12/n2-16.pdf
Annual weevil, black turfgrass ataenius and army worm update
Posted in Insects, Uncategorized on June 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »
My summer student (Emily Hartwig) and I have been conducting soap flushes to monitor annual bluegrass weevil adult and black turfgrass ataenius adult migration from overwintering sites back into the turf this spring twice a week. The results have been interesting, but they will probably complicate or compromise your ABW control success. What we have observed this year is a bimodal emergence pattern for the annual bluegrass weevil adults with a peak May 2 to May 6th and then a second wave that peaked around May 31st. We continue to find a few adults in our soap flushes this week (24 adults in 12 soap flushes). For those of you that applied an adulticide in early May, you would have missed the second migration wave. If you have applied a larvaecide toward the end of May, the results might be a bit better. We are only monitoring and not treating for this pest. It would be very useful to get some feedback from blog subscriber in a few weeks to see if the adulticide application and/or the larvaecide applications were successful and what the specific timing for each was in your location. Maybe I will try a poll with a blog in the future.
On to the black turfgrass ataenius, the adult populations have been steady from May 22 to 31st and they are starting to fall off slightly. For anyone that is monitoring and finding large numbers of adults or for courses where there is a history of BTA damage, the insecticides registered for preventative control of BTA grubs can be applied prior to egg hatch, which is anytime now.
Lastly, my crop entomology colleagues have reported armyworms in the southwestern part of Ontario. Last year there was a fairly big invasion of them on turf as they marched through crop land. Just something to be on the lookout for. Our experience has been that the turf blades are munched off but the crown of the plant is intact and the turf will recover from armyworm damage.
Flowering turfgrass leads to a stemmy stand
Posted in Turf Management on June 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Seeing spots?
Posted in Diseases on June 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »