ANTHRACNOSE!!

Death to Poa annua

Finally! Some disease on my greens that is starting to kill some grass. It has been a long disease-less summer with our last broadcast fungicide application made in early April. Since that time we have had diseases come and go; waitea, brown patch, fusarium and probably others too.

Through good practices or just dumb luck we have been able to manage these disease without the need for traditional fungicide applications. The only thing remotely anti-fungal would be from my regular phosphite applications and possibly the sulfur contained in my fertilizer applications.

As the anthracnose is starting to actually cause widespread damage to the poa I would normally apply a fungicide applications and I'm still not entirely ruling it out. Instead, I am pushing the bentgrass growth to try and get it to fill in the voids. It seems as if the anthracnose is not impacting the bentgrass at this point.

Bentgrass is not being killed by the anthracnose

When I started over-seeding bentgrass back into my greens a few years ago this was exactly why. With the goal to reduce the need for fungicides on my greens I knew that if I had a poly-stand on my greens I could get away with pushing the application intervals further and further as no single disease would completely wipe out a green.

I am further reassured that a fungicide application will not be needed as the bentgrass growth has been going crazy recently. I hope that I can continue to promote this jump in growth and get the bentgrass to fill in the voids left by the anthracnose damage. I stopped regular primo applications at the advice from other bentgrass promoting superintendents and have been pleasantly surprised in the jump in bent growth.

bentgrass is going wild

Of course the trick is to manage the anthracnose at a level that doesn't cause complete turf stand failure so I am watching things closely and will apply a corrective fungicide if things get carried away.

Next up is dollar spot, I currently have enough for a fancy coffee from Starbucks ;) If I can survive the next 3 weeks we should be back into fusarium weather....finally!

Seems like this is just another way to kill poa. Add it to the long list.......