US Turf conference 2011review

Well arrived Saturday and typical got questioned. My fault I did not fill out the visa application correctly. I did say to them it never asked me to print the thing or pay money only to update details. However they were very courteous. One Aussie I know also was questioned due to a small discrepancy in his name and he missed his connecting flight by 1 minute. However all was good and he made it safely about 4 hours after his mates.

Sunday was super bowl my 2nd ever NFL game. Didn’t understand everything but quite entertaining especially when the Steelers scored before half time and started to make a game of it. The pub was crazy with both team fans. It is their GF and just as passionate as we are with our footy.

Afterwards I got to meet John Kaminski a pathologist from penn State which some of you may know as harry Potter or from Twitter. Top bloke had great conversatrion. Full of turf info. Hopefully he can come out to Australia one day and give a talk for us.

I went to a disease id seminar today. 8am-5pm. Very long day but well worth it. I could have been there for another day with that much to cover. The speakers were Dr Bruce Clark (he co wrote the compendium book that some of you may have) and Dr Bruce Martin. 1st class speakers would love to get them out to Australia.Diseases are similar in Australia but here are a few ecxtra ones they get here that we don’t tend to get but the major ones were covered. Interesting to hear that there are new diagnostic tools being developed to identify diseases. Essentially this machine will tell you each diseases that is present in one test. This will enable for more accurate and quicker results. It is being developed from the medical industry. As well there is DNA sequencing starting in turf diseases. Not as much help but will come in handy when identifying diseases from different areas.

There is some new cultural practices with managing anthracnose (which is becoming more of an issue in Sydney this summer). I’ll add more later but please get in touch with me for more info.

That’s all for now I will put different updates throughout the week and put some pics and video as well.

Well I was hoping to update this earlier but time gets away from you. Back in Australia now and I have a bit more time.

After Monday I had a couple of more seminars one on new herbicides and the other on understanding bio stimulants.

I was amazed about the herbicide seminar where the stat was 60 odd herbicide products available in the US. Sounds alot which is more than us, however these are classified as products not individual actives. Really is probably half. The theme was that there are plenty of SU herbicides available, they have 10 available. We have about 5.  Each is a little different to the other but essentially work the same. There is resistance to this group especially for ag use. This is also the case in Australia, so be careful with the SU uses.

The other theme was combo products. These are more common now than a year ago. One word of warning some of these products can have alot less active and hence may not work on all the weeds that well if they both actives were used individually. The teacher was Dr Scott McElroy from Auburn University, very smart guy especially on weeds and herbicides. He is a good speaker and keeps your interest in for the whole 4 hours.

Lunch is always served in a big room. Here is what it looked like:

 

My next seminar was understanding bio stimulants and going through seaweed products hormones and the likes. A well rounded discussion took place and quite alot of interactive participation.

Wednesday and Thursday consisted of the GIS (trade show). this year there were a little over 14,000 people there and the show covered 1.7ha down from the 2.7ha 2 years ago when I went. It usually takes you 2 days to get around but one and a bit days you can cover most things. The US economy is still hurting and you can see that with less booths and less giveaways this year. Usually you can come home with a truck load of giveaways. However this not such a bad thing though.as the information provided and the effort put into their stands were first class. Each stand was wonderfully presented and the people were very friendly.

Here are a couple of pics

 

 

I posted some video on my twitter feed, have a look to the right side of the screen and you can see a power bunker rake. Or see below

 

The last day was Friday and decided to tackle a poa seminar. Well there is still no silver bullet for control. What was surprising was that they only had PGR’s registered for greens use- no post emergent herbicides available. They did have them though for fairway use. Essentially the theme was that you need time, budget and an understanding membership to help reduce the amount of poa. One things was that PGR’s will not get rid of poa 100% and use multiple products to achieve your desired results.

The education conference and GIS is definitely a must do if you ever get the chance. Next entry will be on Daytona stay tuned.