Rolling and Fusarium OSU Trial Update

A few years ago the turf industry in BC was facing a pesticide ban and our association set out to fight the ban successfully. At the time I was worried that we needed to also spend some resources in coming up with alternative pest control measures just in case the ban was enacted. I also wrote to the Western Canada Turfgrass Association with my concerns. Ever since then, alternative pest control strategies have been the focus of this blog.

Last fall I was contacted to by the WCTA to see what I thought would be some things to try. They were already interested in phosphite and Civitas but I also suggested lightweight rolling as I had seen some interesting things on my study green with regards to fusarium.

Just last month I was delighted to read that they had gone ahead with research funding at Oregon State University and had some preliminary results to share! I was also honored to be mentioned in one of the articles.

I won't repeat everything already in the above article so read it for yourself. Basically what they have found is that rolling does in fact seem to have some beneficial effects when it comes to fusarium patch control. They are also testing rolling frequency which is something that I think is important. From my findings 2 years ago it was quite apparent that further benefit was seen from more frequent rolling. This was something that might have been missed in past studies on rolling and fusarium because who would think that more rolling would be any different. Guess what, it is!

My findings from May 2012

It is really cool to see this kind of research being done and I am very proud that my association is funding research of this kind. I think that all members of the WTCA should be proud that not only are they fighting the ban, they are being proactive in funding research that will help us all be better turf managers.