I miss the spring breaks of my youth, where I would come home from school, work a few days on the golf course and then take a long weekend hanging out at the beach with my friends, compared to spring breaks of today, when the boy comes home from school, where he works a few days, sprinkled in with doctor's and dentist appointments. It has kept me from discussing the next topic. But in hindsight the break allowed me some time in how I wanted to focus on our weed issues in our fairways and tees in this post, compared to my last post about greens.
We have bermuda fairways in what I would call the lower part of the upper transition zone. Our fairways really only see good growing conditions for an average of 3 months. We will get some green-up in April, and some growth in May and September, they will retain their color into October until that first hard frost, (which going back and looking at data is coming later and later, the last two years occurring during the first week of November). The best growing months are June, July and August.
We will tend to struggle with 4 main weeds, which we try to control through both pre-emergent applications and post emergent applications.
The first weed of concern is poa annua which mostly occurs in the very early spring, but some might appear in the fall. It might be first on this list because, maybe it is the main topic of conversation at the moment in our fairways.
Both poa and volunteer rye can be seen in both pictures, the poa dying out after a recent glyphosate application. More will be talked about in posts about post herbicide treatments.
There is volunteer rye grass, which we might see emerge in the fall and/or spring. This I believe is mainly from the many years prior to switching to bermuda turf, fairways and tees were regularly seeded every September with ryegrass. I am guessing there is a huge bank of ryegrass seed in our soils.
Prostrate knotweed, which is usually found germinating in early spring to summer, in very thin and compacted areas of fairways. It appears as a grassy weed when first emerging, some say it looks similar to crabgrass, but it usually appears much sooner then crabgrass does.
Pictures of knotweed, the one on the right shows it as it is just emerging. Also it is evident that those areas are thin and compacted.
Pictures of knotweed, the one on the right shows it as it is just emerging. Also it is evident that those areas are thin and compacted.
And then there is the nemeses of our greens, goosegrass which also likes to appear in high traffic, highly compacted areas of our fairways and some tees.
Goosegrass found in high traffic areas of our fairways.
Goosegrass found in high traffic areas of our fairways.
This post will deal more with some of the issues which I believe allow the weeds to compete and will focus on the one strategy that should work with combating them all, yet leads me to questions on the timing and products we are using for that strategy of applying pre-emergent herbicides.
We have always tried to put down a pre-emergent application of Prodiamine, in our fairways. We have used it also on tees and our warm season collars and approaches, but not as the sole pre-emergent product. When going back to study our application records, what I have found, that not every season has the program that I had planned, been successfully applied. The program calls for 1 lb. of Prodiamine per acre to be sprayed the first week of March. This should provide 4 1/2 months of pre-emergent protection. In 2017 that application was made during the second week of March, we were able to make that same application again this year that second week of March. Looking back even farther, the 2016 application wasn't made, (my notes don't say why), in 2015 and 2014, that application was made the first week of April, these were the first applications spraying Prodiamine on fairways. Obviously I feel I have gotten the timing pushed forward to try and address the Poa annua issue, but with recent early springs, indicator plants such as Forsythia, have seen blooms in February these past 3 years.
A second application of Prodiamine is planned six weeks after the first application, which is spread with a fertilizer carrier, this application rate of Prodiamine is at .75 pound per acre, which should provide 4 months control. The last two years that application of Prodiamine and fertilizer has been made in mid April, (20th in 2017, and 21st in 2016) which should be controlling goosegrass into the beginning of August. We haven't seen that type of control though, as goosegrass has been appearing in early to mid July (unlike in Greens where we haven't seen it until August, but the last of the split applications on greens have been late May, different product ) but I wonder if excessive rain has maybe been the issue? Revisiting weather data from 2017, showed we had received 15.49" of rain in April (with 7.2" at the end of the month, after the fertilizer/pre-emergent application had been made), 8.8" of rain in May, 8.03" of rain in June, all above average rain fall. The two prior years of 2014 and 2015 those fertilizer/pre-emergent applications were made in May. I will really be looking at the results of our pre-emergent applications this year, and better track when our weeds emerge and populations of weeds. In the past, notes don't tell me our weed populations.
While pre-emergent applications have been made to try and suppress weed populations, I feel our biggest issue has been the lack of consistency of fertilizer applied to produce healthy turf that would crowd out weeds. Last year in 2017, we did make 3 fertilizer applications, the first that was in combination with our pre-emergent herbicide which applied 1 lb. of Nitrogen, our second application was that May which included our grub control, which applied .7 lbs of Nitrogen, and our third application was in late July, which provided another pound of Nitrogen for a total of 2.7 lbs. of Nitrogen, not bad I thought. While in 2016, we had one application which totaled 1.5 lbs. of Nitrogen. In 2015, we had a total of 1.3 lbs. of Nitrogen applied. Going back to at least 2010, we are averaging just 2 lbs. of Nitrogen per season. While I know there has been a trend of less inputs overall in the golf world, with the traffic on our fairways all year long, (including the many months they are in dormancy), It is of my opinion we just are not getting enough nutrients out. We do have evidence on tees where we went a few years of providing 3 to 4 pounds of Nitrogen which really strengthened the tees, to where we have actually started backing off to 2 pounds of Nitrogen the past couple of years, and only spot treating small and par 3 tees with a little extra.
Fertilizer truck making applications on our fairways, we currently do not have fertilizer application equipment for large areas, the cost of the truck is reasonable, but our product selections and timing of applications we have less control over.
We also wonder if heavy rains like this cause us problems with our pre-emergent applications possibly moving, or breaking down under the extra water. We also have to wonder how it might affect our fertilization efforts. On fairways where we will see water running, they tend to not have as strong of turf compared to other fairways that are fairly level and sit up higher on the property.
This was from .75" of water in less than an hour, in the upper pictures you can see the water rushing down the fairway, while on the picture to the left is the next morning.
We plan to do some trials on one of our bermuda range tees and on a couple of par 3 tees of different fertilizer products and amounts to see if we can improve the turf vigor of our fairways.
In future posts, I will visit those different trails and also talk about our post herbicide treatments on our 4 major weed problems.
Thanks for reading!
Mel
We have always tried to put down a pre-emergent application of Prodiamine, in our fairways. We have used it also on tees and our warm season collars and approaches, but not as the sole pre-emergent product. When going back to study our application records, what I have found, that not every season has the program that I had planned, been successfully applied. The program calls for 1 lb. of Prodiamine per acre to be sprayed the first week of March. This should provide 4 1/2 months of pre-emergent protection. In 2017 that application was made during the second week of March, we were able to make that same application again this year that second week of March. Looking back even farther, the 2016 application wasn't made, (my notes don't say why), in 2015 and 2014, that application was made the first week of April, these were the first applications spraying Prodiamine on fairways. Obviously I feel I have gotten the timing pushed forward to try and address the Poa annua issue, but with recent early springs, indicator plants such as Forsythia, have seen blooms in February these past 3 years.
A second application of Prodiamine is planned six weeks after the first application, which is spread with a fertilizer carrier, this application rate of Prodiamine is at .75 pound per acre, which should provide 4 months control. The last two years that application of Prodiamine and fertilizer has been made in mid April, (20th in 2017, and 21st in 2016) which should be controlling goosegrass into the beginning of August. We haven't seen that type of control though, as goosegrass has been appearing in early to mid July (unlike in Greens where we haven't seen it until August, but the last of the split applications on greens have been late May, different product ) but I wonder if excessive rain has maybe been the issue? Revisiting weather data from 2017, showed we had received 15.49" of rain in April (with 7.2" at the end of the month, after the fertilizer/pre-emergent application had been made), 8.8" of rain in May, 8.03" of rain in June, all above average rain fall. The two prior years of 2014 and 2015 those fertilizer/pre-emergent applications were made in May. I will really be looking at the results of our pre-emergent applications this year, and better track when our weeds emerge and populations of weeds. In the past, notes don't tell me our weed populations.
While pre-emergent applications have been made to try and suppress weed populations, I feel our biggest issue has been the lack of consistency of fertilizer applied to produce healthy turf that would crowd out weeds. Last year in 2017, we did make 3 fertilizer applications, the first that was in combination with our pre-emergent herbicide which applied 1 lb. of Nitrogen, our second application was that May which included our grub control, which applied .7 lbs of Nitrogen, and our third application was in late July, which provided another pound of Nitrogen for a total of 2.7 lbs. of Nitrogen, not bad I thought. While in 2016, we had one application which totaled 1.5 lbs. of Nitrogen. In 2015, we had a total of 1.3 lbs. of Nitrogen applied. Going back to at least 2010, we are averaging just 2 lbs. of Nitrogen per season. While I know there has been a trend of less inputs overall in the golf world, with the traffic on our fairways all year long, (including the many months they are in dormancy), It is of my opinion we just are not getting enough nutrients out. We do have evidence on tees where we went a few years of providing 3 to 4 pounds of Nitrogen which really strengthened the tees, to where we have actually started backing off to 2 pounds of Nitrogen the past couple of years, and only spot treating small and par 3 tees with a little extra.
Fertilizer truck making applications on our fairways, we currently do not have fertilizer application equipment for large areas, the cost of the truck is reasonable, but our product selections and timing of applications we have less control over.
We also wonder if heavy rains like this cause us problems with our pre-emergent applications possibly moving, or breaking down under the extra water. We also have to wonder how it might affect our fertilization efforts. On fairways where we will see water running, they tend to not have as strong of turf compared to other fairways that are fairly level and sit up higher on the property.
This was from .75" of water in less than an hour, in the upper pictures you can see the water rushing down the fairway, while on the picture to the left is the next morning.
We plan to do some trials on one of our bermuda range tees and on a couple of par 3 tees of different fertilizer products and amounts to see if we can improve the turf vigor of our fairways.
In future posts, I will visit those different trails and also talk about our post herbicide treatments on our 4 major weed problems.
Thanks for reading!
Mel
