Poa Annua Control

The picture is pretty self explanatory.  The darker green turf is creeping bentgrass.  The lighter green is poa annua.  Poa annua reproduces from seed.  Much of the explosion of poa on Newport Bay can be traced to a couple things.  First we have committed to bermudagrass fairways.  In doing this, we spray the fairways clean in the winter with RoundUp.  We preemerge them with Barricade in September to prevent poa.  There is a huge seedbed in the greens from the previous years of non control.  The second contributor is we have worked very hard to attempt to balance all of our soil nutrients.  Together with the damp weather it is truly a perfect storm.

There are some new products on the market like Xonerate and experimental product from Korea-Poa Cure.  They show a lot of promise, but they are still in their infant stage of use and development.  The problem is there is a fair amount of pow, so for the time being, we try to control seed heads and stunt it with growth regulators to allow the bentgrass as much advantage as we can.

The problem in the spring of 2013 with growth regulators is it has been much below normal temperature wise.  This has caused the growth regulators to react very differently in the plant.  Last week we had three nights in the 30s with scattered frost.  The poa annua on the Newport greens has turned bronze.  The good thing is the poa is suppressed and the green is not as bumpy as it would be without regulation.