Extreme Disease pressure January 2016 -NSW

What a start to the year for NSW. After a a great greenkeepers Christmas January has turned to the extreme with high temps humidity and rainfall.

I started to see a few sick turf surfaces around the place just due to sheer pressure.

With these conditions you need to look at for the remainder of the summer is your spray program.Normally 3 week intervals are working but with this much pressure you need to look at shortening intervals to 2 weeks. On top of that a in between spray may be needed just to top things with the onset of heavy rains.

The week ahead

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Pythium is one disease that will be present now.

Water logged greens are a perfect environment for Pythium root rot. You can see Pythium as patterns in greens that follow the drainage lines. Equipment use also spreads the disease. If you have a short root system with compacted soil and poor drainage, your turf will need extra light watering to keep it alive. This will increase Pythium pressure, due to plant wetness. On the other hand, deep infrequent watering can increase Pythium pressure as well as the roots and the soil are being completely soaked which is conducive to Pythium outbreaks. Very hard to win in this situation. That is why it is important to maintain healthy turf and to use specific Pythium fungicides on a preventative basis.

Apply your fungicide (use Proplant here) down past the crown do not leave on the surface with application (water in slightly after your boom application)

Proplant image

As always we do recommend a broad spectrum tank mix partner with Proplant (as its is specific to pythium only) as when we were anyalysing the samples in the trials we always found other diseases namely brown patch. So have a look at partnering Proplant with Ippon, 250GT, Protak, Monstar,

Also be aware of algae with all the wet surfaces. A good mix is Dacogreen + Liquid Dek here.

Cultural Controls of Pythium:

  • Avoid too much N
  • Aerate the area slightly to allow more oxygen to penetrate the soil
  • Utilise pentrant wetting agents to push the moisture through the profile
  • Keep plants healthy as possible with using root stimulants and other biological products
  • Avoid mowing in moist hot weather
  • Raise mowing heights
  • Avoid verti cutting, top dressing if greens are infected  as it puts more stress on the plant
  • Reduce leaf wetness
  • Increase air flow and sunlight to Pythium prone areas

For more information see the brochure here Proplant Brochure Also have a look at our guide to managing pythium not just from a chemical point of view but from a cultural view. Disease guide rhizo eri pythium 2014

I hope this post helps understand the disease a little better and how to manage it.

Also I am heading to to the USA to GIS again and will be attending a few lectures that i will post about later on. You will be able to follow what is going on through the live blog I’ll be doing with Turf Republic again and along with my twitter feed. I will post all the link the week before.

 

As usual if you need any help feel free to contact me

zreikat@campbellchemicals.com.au