THE most challenging part of maintaining cool season turf.

In my opinion THE single most challenging part of our job is weed control in cool season turf.  With warm season, the weed problems exist when the turf is dormant in the winter and not actively growing.  They are simple to control.  Cool season turf however, is much more challenging.  The weed control begins in late March, early April.  You do not see the results of this for months.  Here is an example of pre emerged turf vs un pre emerged...un pre emerged is to the right.

There are instances where there MAY be an issue with a batch of product.  I do not understand all of the goosegrass on #1 and 5 fairway Seaside.  There are no sprayer skips.  Timing was correct, but there is a lot of breakthrough.  Generally I would only expect to see this in divots this time of the year.  I have a Dow Chemical factory rep coming this week to assess the situation.  The problem is how to treat the weed without damaging the desirable grasses around it.  If it is too warm, we can do even more damage than just looking at weeds. 

We have taken to a spot-spraying approach to weed control.  It is more environmentally friendly and we have less chance for damage.  However we do not spray herbicides if the temperature is expected to be above 85F.

Here are a few other difficult weeds that pop up when the cool season grasses are not actively growing and are under heat/summer stress:
GOOSEGRASS

DALLISGRASS

NUTSEDGE

KNOTWEED

Some unusual turf diseases from extreme heat...FAIRY RING

                                                EARWIG MOUNDS

MUSHROOMS FROM FAIRY RING ON GREENS

POSSIBLY A NEW BACTERIAL PROBLEM: ETILIOATION

I know many of you have seen these pop up in the last two weeks.  Some of these things are routine and some are unprecedented in my career.  You knew it was going to be a challenging year when it was 80 degrees in late February. 

I just wanted to show some of the problems we encounter and explain what is being attemted to control them.