Northeast
The Farm Links Experience
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This week will be spent traveling to Farm Links to hear the discussion on BASF’s Intrinsic properties in their two products Insignia and Honor (Insignia + Emerald). The thought process behind this is that applications of either of these products with the “Intrinsic” label will help in managing stress. Leading up to the conference, many of the pathologists have been frantically emailing back and forth discussing the actual agronomic benefits from these products. Although the verdict is out, the discussion raised some key issues regarding the promotion of fungicides as stress reducers. Issues that need to be addressed is the...
Cooler temperature are here to stay.
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It’s been a while since I last posted and temperatures during this past month have been highly variable.  Warmer to actual hot temperatures were observed in many parts of the Northeast over the past week, but the forecast for the upcoming 10 days looks like cooler temperatures may be here to stay. With these cooler temperatures will still come the potential for disease activity.  Over the past couple of weeks, dollar spot has made it’s typical late season resurgence and we are probably not out of the water completely as far as this disease goes.  A couple of year’s ago...
Shout out to cooler temps and those nice folks in the south
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Well, I just returned from a trip to what I call the Deep South and can’t tell you how happy I am not to be living there!  Holy man was it hot out.  Here we are in mid-September and the high temps were in the upper 90′s and my car temperature gauge was reading 102. Having returned last night in a deep fog that nearly had our plane crashing into the runway, I realized how nice it is to be back in the Northern US where night time temperatures are finally cooling off and creating some great grass growing conditions. ...
Healthy grass makes weak grass look worse.
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I’m still hearing a lot of reports of active summer patch. Although diseases are still present, the pressure from the extreme temperatures and the short nights are coming to an end. High temperatures throughout the Northeast are expected to be in the upper 60′s to mid 80′s depending if you are inland or along the coast. Despite weather changing for the better and growing conditions improving, this is presenting a problem for some as the turf that made it through the summer is starting to look good which is making the turf that was on the edge or that didn’t...
Lower temps may mean MORE turf diseases
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This past week was busy for the turf pathologists around the country. I was very busy dealing with samples, our Research Field Day, and scathing emails regarding my post about bacterial wilt being BS and the Wall Street Journal Article.  I should definitely clarify (which I attempted to do in a comment to my original post) what I was talking about.  Here are a couple of comments that I received about these posts. Email received about my post about the WSJ article: “I recently read your blog titled “Melting turf and Turf Pathology meeting”.  And I was a little confused...
Melting turf and the turf pathology meetings
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Turf around the country continues to decline and it looks as if there is no break in sight for some time. Many golf courses are having trouble and I even read a Wall Street Journal article today that talked specifically about the problems courses are having. In the article it states that “a handful of high profile courses had already had to close, and if the heat continues, others are likely to follow.” It goes on to mention a few of the courses by name which mean to me that the problem is so bad that courses are even trying...
Pathologist or Psychologist
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How come we don’t get paid as much as Dr. Phil? Image from by greggoconnell We have moved into August and hopefully that means only 2 or 3 weeks until some sort of a break arrives. This has definitely been a brutal July (and summer for that matter) and my discussions with golf course superintendents’ recently has me feeling more like a psychologist than a pathologist.  Samples have been rolling in from throughout the Northeast with fears of everything from bacterial wilt to summer patch to Pythium.  As far as real diseases go, summer patch seemed to be making its...
Just a brief update
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It has been tough to give an update since things have been so busy, but I thought that I would at least give a summary of what I have been seeing in the Northeast either while I was in the field or in the lab. Typical diseases:Dollar spot, anthracnose, brown patch and Pythium blight have been working on turf for a few weeks.  Gray leaf spot has also been reported by some in the region, although I am not sure if this has been confirmed by any diagnostic lab.  Also, many courses have been either excessively wet or more likely...
Spray, but watch the burn
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With temperatures in the high 90s or even triple digits throughout many parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States has many scrambling to protect their turf from potential diseases. In addition to the uncharacteristic high temperatures is equally unusual low relative humidity. One common thing in calls that I received this weekend was that everyone was scrambling with hoses. Another interesting point that I generally don’t think about when applying fungicides for field studies is the potential for burn when spraying. In many trials, we only apply a couple of products at a time and rarely mix to the...
Getting the Discussion Going…
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This weekend the U.S. Open was played at Pebble Beach (image courtesy Associated Press).  Known for hosting many events each year and as a repeated site of the US Open (the USGA announced they will be back in 2019), the course proved to be a great challenge for all the players with the winner McDowell being the only one to finish at even par for the Championship.  Although I wasn’t crazy about his winning, my feelings quickly changed when he gave a shout out to his friends and family back in Northern Ireland.  He went on to say that there...
Northeast Turf Diseases and a Call to @ThePCreamer
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Last week I had the opportunity to visit several golf courses in the Northeastern United States on one of my five scheduled internship visits. This trip took me through CT, MA, NY, and PA where I had the chance to visit my students as well as a several golf courses. During the trip I saw a variety of diseases, but perhaps the most impressive was the take all patch severity at one course (although I saw it in MA and PA). Finally, the shout out to Paula Creamer later in this post. Around Connecticut there were just about all the...
How big of a turf nerd do you have to be…
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…to name Turf Diseases as the Super Blog of the Month?  Well, apparently the folks at Golf Course Industry are just nerdy enough and I love it! Pat Jones, Publisher/Editorial Director of GCI Magazine, relayed the good news today (via Facebook).  Turf Diseases has been named the Super Blog of the Month and will be featured for the entire month on their blogroll. So I guess there is no where to go but down from here. So as for the updates about diseases.  Today I saw some interesting things at the research facility.  Over the weekend Fairy Ring (Type II...
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