Pollinator Week

Since it is Pollinator Week, I want to point out some of our successes from the last few seasons we've had in our attempts to participate in bringing more pollinators to our course.  Our efforts have had their ups and downs, (which might be from mostly flying by the seat of our pants), but considering our lack of knowledge we have had some successes.  I hope to follow up with some things we have tried when establishing our areas.

                

The above pictures are from our first year in 2016, planting a Missouri Wildflower Mix, in an area of our old driving range that sits between our 1st and 9th holes.  These pictures are from April and May of that year.

These pictures above come from late June and early July of 2016.  We were pretty happy with our results and the different looks during the season.

In 2017 we saw results like this below in June and early July.  Then the area seemed to be taken over by ragweed it appeared.  We ended up mowing all of it down in August.  We were still hopeful that the seeds would create a similar result in 2018.

                  

           

The one surprise from 2017 was spotting this common milkweed that had come into a small section of our natural area, just outside of where we seeded the wildflower mix.

                 

This spring (2018) we were somewhat surprised at the amount of common milkweed that had come in this year.  It had spread from a small maybe 10 x 10 area to now across between both holes.

We also were excited to see some pollinators in the area of the milkweed, including what appears to be a Monarch Butterfly (in the pictures below)

                          

Unfortunately we are not seeing the wildflowers in this area this year.  There seems to be much ragweed, and we were not able to try any control methods prior to their huge growth.  We will make some attempts, trying different products and trials to remove some of the plant material we would like to get rid of.

               

We did see in our field trail plots above some of these plants in a planting that we did in the spring of this year.  We installed it to allow us to try maybe different herbicides to remove unwanted material and not be as upset if we damaged the wildflowers.  There were two different planting methods used.  It was funny that we tried the same methods in another area of the golf course and did not receive the same results.

We also were surprised to find another type of milkweed growing in another native area that just seemed to show up on it's own.

         

While we haven't achieved the look we were possibly going for, we will continue to try and expand our pollinator offerings.  I will continue to research and have already taking a couple of seminars that I think will help us moving forward.

Thanks for reading!

Mel

Weed Control In Warm Season Grasses

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.  

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.

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

 

Greens and Goosegrass

I thought I would talk about our biggest weed issue, not because we have more goosegrass on greens compared to other areas, (although some years it might seem like it), but goosegrass is more problematic on putting surfaces.  As the photos below show, how problematic goosegrass can be on putting greens.


This picture was taken in 2015 on our fifth green in August of that year.  August has been typical of the time we start seeing goosegrass in greens.  Not all greens will have it, and some that do will have varying degrees of it.  (Some of the color seems a little off because I blew the picture up some and also due to I think some clouds that day.)






This is from our chipping green this past September of 2017.  We did start seeing breakthrough of goose in August of this past year as well.

Our 10th green is the green I actually will watch for goosegrass to emerge first.  Some seasons it might be the only green that will have goosegrass, along with a few heavily traffic areas on greens.  Other seasons the goose is a little more widespread.



I think why 10 green sees more goosegrass could be for some reason it tends to dry out a little quicker than many of our other greens.  It was constructed in a different time frame, and could have maybe a little bit different particle size greens mix than other greens.  It is also possible the greens mix itself might be a little deeper causing the perched water table to be deeper and allowing the green to dry out quicker.  All which causes the green to be watered more and we wonder if that is breaking down the preemergent application?  When talking with other superintendents, they seem to have more problems with goosegrass during very wet seasons.  This past season we saw 15.49" of rain in April, 8.8" in May, 8.03" in June, and 7.39" of rain in August.  Well above normal.  In 2015, the picture of # 5 green came from, we had 8" of rain in May, 6.6" in June, 8.35" in July, and 7.36" in August.  (All information from data collecting).

The pre-emergent product we have been using for quite awhile (I would say 10+ years) is dithiopyr in a fertilizer combination.  Prior to last year it was a 0-0-20 w/.162% dithiopyr which we would apply in 2 split applications.  The first one pretty much two weeks after our spring greens aeration, which would be somewhere around the 15th of April.  We were pretty darn consistent with this application, only missing the target date by a day or two if we missed at all.  The follow up application would occur usually 6 weeks later, shooting for the last week of May.  If we missed this date, we could be a week or two behind for that second application.  I have to wonder, was that part of the cause of my problem?  Last year we switched to a different product, same active ingredient of dithiopyr.  We went with a 0-0-5 with .103% dithiopyr and followed a highly used program timing in our area.  We still made that first application on the second week of April, we made the second application three weeks later, with the last application three weeks after that, (same timing as our second application of the 0-0-20 product)  We still came up with some goosegrass in August.  Was it the 32+" of rain in April, May and June?  Or was it possible that I missed the first application date?  Goosegrass will germinate when soil temperature averages stay in the 60-65 range at 2" depths.  While I regularly check soil temperatures, could I have missed my window due to checking a soil temperature during the cool early morning, or when I might have missed taking the soil temperature while doing one of my many other chores, or those couple of days off?  Did both issues play a part?  (My philosophy is it usually isn't just one thing that causes an issue).  This year I am committing myself to not miss that soil temperature window.

We will again go with the 0-0-5 with .103% dithiopyr with the same 3 split applications.  Two exceptions will be on # 10 green I will do two split applications of another product that contains Bensulide and Oxadiazon, and I will split the practice green up into fourths, with the 0-0-5 being applied to two areas, and the Bensulide and Oxadiazon being applied to the other two locations.  The other reason I am using four sections of the practice green is there will be two fertilizer trials going on as well.

So how will we attack any goosegrass that has emerged?  We will continue to pull some of the plants we see during course setup and while mowing.  As the pictures below show, these are some tough weeds, but fairly easy to pull with the right tools, and if they get a little large on us.

       

 One of the other tricks we have tried with some success is loading up a plastic tube that has a sponge on the bottom, with chemicals and dabbing that chemical onto the goosegrass plant.  As the picture to the right indicates.  We have used MSMA because it works great on goosegrass, it is very cheap, and we can still use it on the golf course in small settings by spot applying.  The problem we had with using MSMA, was any MSMA that touched the bentgrass next to the goosegrass was killed as well, leaving the areas we treated with small dead spots, visually unappealing.  Unfortunately I did not get some good pictures of the results.  

Our other chemical option we will try this next season is using the herbicide Pylex.  We did some trials with Pylex this last season, all in our large turf sprayer.  I am going to dedicate another blog to the whole process of trying the Pylex, as it has a variety of uses, and we sprayed a variety of areas with it.  The area in this blog that I will show is the back of our chipping green.  I mixed the Pylex at a rate of 1/2 oz per acre.  The results are shown to the right.  Some of the classic ghosting signs are in the picture, this is the results of using the Pylex.  I have seen some people use the Pylex in dobber tools with good results.  The toughest part is mixing the small amount of product (.032 oz per gallon or 1 ml for my Canadian friends, I guess the metric system can be handy).  It is best suggested to mix that small amount of product in about 8 oz of water then add it to the backpack sprayer or dobber.   

This is an ongoing project to find the best solutions to the issue of goosegrass on our greens. 

I am hoping to talk in a future post about how we have worked to control goosegrass on tees and fairway areas.  What we have tried, how well it has worked, and how we look to go forward in that issue.  Looking at both pre and post emergent herbicides.

If anyone wants to share their successful programs, or see how we can make some improvements to our current programs, I hope you will share your secrets.

Thanks for reading!

Mel

Weather Data Interpretations

I have been rolling around in my head how I planned to show the value of my data collection, in relation to certain issues I continue to see on the course.  As I write this, what I have seen from the weather the past couple of weeks, has played a part in what I write about today.  

As I related in my last post, I have been tracking certain weather phenomenon over the many years at my facility.  A recent discovery this past week is one that I have been trying to track yearly.

                       



Forsythia bushes are good indicators for the average layman as to be a good time for making preemergent applications for crabgrass.  The upper left picture was taken this past week on February 14th.  I'm a little surprised about seeing these buds just starting to swell this early in the season, especially with the winter we have had so far.  The picture on the upper right and to the left are from 2017 when we actually saw some visible blooming of the bush from a distance.  We hadn't seen that quite yet this season, but looking at the 10 day forecast, I'm expecting it any time soon.    

Some stats to ponder:  So far in 2018 we saw the buds just starting to swell on February 14th.  This past January our average low temperature was -4 degrees below the average low of 22 degrees.  The average high we saw for January was average.  As of February 13th the average low was -7 degrees below the average, and the average high was -8 below the average.  (Of course after the high in the 70's on February 15th that could have changed).

On February 13th, 2017, as the picture shows above, we were seeing the Forsythia actually blooming.  That didn't surprise me much, because in January of 2017 our average high temperatures where 6 degrees above the average, and the average low temperatures were 4 degrees above the average as well.  In February the average high was running almost 10 degrees above the average, and the average low was 11 degrees above the average low.  A total opposite of what we are seeing this year.

In 2016 we saw Forsythia buds on February 22nd.  Our January temperatures were average and the February temperatures were above average, + 3 above the low, + 5 above the high.        

In 2015 I didn't see the Forsythia bloom because I was out due to a surgery, but in 2014 we didn't see the Forsythia bloom until March 21st, and in 2013, we didn't see the Forsythia bloom until March 12th.  

While trained professionals do not usually rely on just using Forsythia blooming as their set in stone guide to start making preemergent applications, I do use the appearance of blooms as a guide to step up my soil temperature tracking and logging them into my weather logs.  When I take soil temperatures to monitor for preemergent applications, I will take them at a 2" depth.  I also take them in a USGA sand based green, and I know sand seems to heat up quicker then native soils and will cool down also.  As I analyzed past springs soil temperatures, I would see even with some warm temperatures and mild springs much fluctuation in the day to day readings.

As I studied applications dates and compared them to soil temperatures, what I did find was on some applications, such as green applications for crabgrass and goosegrass, I was very consistent with application dates over the years, but they didn't correlate always with soil temperatures in regards to when those applications should have been made.  And then I wondered, was it the application timing that caused some failure and allowed goosegrass to appear?  Or as I noted in some years, could it be something else?  Such as in 2017, we had 15.5" of rain, in May 8.8" of rain, in August 7.4" of rain?  In 2015, we had 8" of rain in May, 6.6" in June, 8.4" in July and 7.4" in August.  Is the rain playing a part as well?

 






When it came to other areas of the golf course such as tees or fairways, I observed more of a consistency problem with application timings.  Some years I felt timing was excellent, and other years I know the timing of applications had to lead to some of the issues.  What I did wonder was these areas being soil instead of sand based, did soil temperatures and/or rain play parts in those issues?  The other question I have and can't answer, was, yes we seem to get goosegrass every year, and it is most noticeable in certain areas where it will be worse than other areas, but I also don't have true data from season to season how bad was it?  As I analyze my programs, using this past data, I have given myself more questions than I had before.

So moving forward to take advantage of the data and evaluate my programs, I am going to work on taking soil temperatures from both the sand based greens and also the soil based tee/fairway areas.  When it comes to figuring out the severity of weed problems, I will work on finding a way to document the amount of weeds in a given area.  I will also map, especially in fairways, higher density weed populations and look at treating those areas with different products to gage their effectiveness.

I will discuss in my next post, certain weed problems in certain areas on the course.  I will use my data, from weather to application dates, to products, to discuss past issues, and try to figure out solutions and conduct trials to find ways to improve course conditions and develop programs that work.  Hopefully those with more experience can pass along some suggestions.

Thanks so much for reading!

Mel    

Mother Nature Always Wins

As I sit staring out at the ice covering the trees, the road, even Lucy when she does go outside, lead me to my thoughts today.  It is something I had been working on for the last week in my head, but Mother Nature cleared it up for me with the weather of these past two weeks.  Missouri seems to be a special weather phenomenal location, of course this might be true of many locations in the transition zones.  My previous locals have either been the deep south such as Florida, or in true northern climates such as New Jersey and Northern Indiana.  Last weekend here in Missouri we had rain, ice, and some snow, the course shutdown from Sunday to Wednesday as we waited for the snow to melt.  By Friday we were back up into the 50's.  Along came more ice yesterday (Saturday) leaving roads almost impassible, yet tomorrow will be back up into the 40's and by Thursday we could very well reach 70 degrees.

                         

What leads me to discuss weather was seeing a comment about not relying on dates of the calendar to make certain applications, and me reviewing my data to figure out why some of my programs might not be working as well as I had hoped.  I will say I am pretty good about tracking some of my data.  I will go out to my weather station regularly (as in daily) during the season and record my minimum and maximum temperatures, soil temperatures (sand based green), wind speed, precipitation, relative humidity, and evapotranspiration (ET).  I will mainly use the temperatures daily in season to update my Growing Degree Day (GDD) chart, which I use to monitor when I will make my next growth regulator application.  The soil temperature I find very important early in the season, as it will direct me to make preemergent weed and fairy ring applications.  Wind and relative humidity plays a part in how closely we will monitor our soil moistures (or should I say, prioritize the monitoring), and the ET will be used to help decide how much irrigation we will provide if needed.

                    

Above is a picture of our weather station. Our ET gauge is on the left, our min/max thermometer in the center, and our soil thermometer and wind/relative humidity reading tool is on the right.  It also can read dew points which I heard about in a seminar, which might be a better way to track overall drying conditions, but that is something I will have to work with and figure out how to interpret the readings into my data.  I have to say, I know many of my colleagues have weather stations tied into their irrigation systems, or even some have weather stations tied into their data tracking worksheets, where readings are automatically recorded for various information needed, such as disease tracking and growth management, which helps them decide on timing their fertilizer applications, among other things.  I'm just a simple folk, (mostly too old to figure out this new fangled stuff, and short of budget), but the information we record is important to all of us in the industry.

Other points of data collection include; a monthly calendar, where I record all activities on the golf course. Be it cultural practices, fertilizer and pesticide applications, rain, irrigation, and even golfer information, such as if we were open for play or allowed carts, I find all this information useful at one time or another.  Some of this information is duplicated in my fertilizer/pesticide application log, or in my weather log.  I also have some other data collecting sheets for moisture readings, but that I will share at a more appropriate time.

        

     Here is the monthly calendar example, even color coded.  It helps me identify practices or needed data quicker.  To the left are the past 6 years of data collection.  I will talk about how being able to reach back that far is helpful in my next post.

To the right is my daily weather log.  I record the time I check the weather station, (usually after our first morning jobs), what the current temperature is, the lows from the morning, and the highs from yesterday, (I have my 24 hours resetting about 8:30 - 9:00 AM, compared to the National Weather Service resetting at midnight). Any rain, soil temperature at the time, wind, humidity, ET, and some comments.  I will at certain times of the year record afternoon soil and humidity readings.  I will also do a monthly temperature average and total rain fall for the month.  That information comes in handy when analyzing the month and I use it in my monthly reports.

The last data collection post I will share, has to do with our fertilizer and pesticide applications.  I have these going back to 2009 in the format I am sharing in this post, but I can trace applications all the way back to 2005, most of 2004 applications were lost in our shop fire.  After a visit by our state Pesticide Bureau, I changed to this format.  It wasn't really necessary due to the fact we didn't use restricted use pesticides at the time, but it has allowed me to go back and visit programs to make improvements.  The middle sheet is a list of all applications made to a certain location that season, such as greens.  The right sheet is an application sheet that list each product, rate, amount, weather conditions, application vehicle or mode, who the applicator was, lot numbers of the products, and any other issues or conditions that might have affected the application.  I know there are online formats which I will play with this season, but I will continue this format as well, since it is what our state requires.  

                

This bulk of data I can use to review and improve my programs, and to figure out why we had success and/or failures. In future posts I will discuss an issue, the program, the data, and what changes we might make.  I hope to hear what other data might be important for me to track.

Thanks for reading!

Mel