Fine tune your program

Changes in winter and spring weather patterns are forcing superintendents to adjust their fungicide application programs, among other things.

“You have to build a program that you think is pretty broad and solid,” says Penn State University turf professor John Kaminski. “And then you really have to fine tune that program as weather changes throughout the season. You have to be ready in case something like that does happen. You have to have contingency plans.”

Turf researchers reported seeing pink snow mold and Microdochium patch last year in late May and early June when the weather was wet and cooler, Kaminski says.

“The fungi don’t show up based on the calendar,” he says. “They show up based on what the conditions are around them. Fortunately, you can build a solid program that can cover a lot of different things, but you have to be on guard to see unusual things and be able to spot them pretty early.”

Mild weather late in the season can lead to issues the following spring. Rutgers University turf pathologist Dr. Bruce Clarke points to some work done by turf researcher Paul Koch at the University of Wisconsin on the effectiveness of fungicide against snow mold.

“They were looking at how long fungicide would last for snow-mold protection,” Clarke says. “The theory was if you didn’t have snow cover that (ultraviolet) light would break down the fungicide quickly.  I think what they were finding was that snowfall wasn’t as important as rainfall. Rainfall tends to break down the fungicide to the point where it’s not lasting as long.

“We’ve had conditions this past year where it was very warm,” Clarke adds. “People put their snow mold applications down like they normally do -- in mid to late November -- and we had turf still growing and a lot of those fungicides depleted pretty quickly.”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based turf writer and frequent GCI contributor.