Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Poa annua seedhead supression


According to the Forsythia blooms, Growing Degree Day counters, salesmen, other superintendents, and last but not least my gut, it is time to take action against Poa annua seedheads.  Annually here at CCC we enter into a many faceted battle against what many industry personnel have called the "super weed".  We begin the battle with an application of growth regulators to control the emergence of seedheads.  This application must be timed right in order for it to work, and the timing depends on a whole host of variables.  Unfortunately, the growth regulators do produce some negative side effects ranging from off colored turf to increasing susceptibility to certain diseases, to increased problems with worm casts.  Most of the side effects are related simply to the fact that we are slowing the growth of the turf (including the bent) during a time of year where we would like to have some good growth.

This year we are leaving #11 and #12 fairways out of the growth regulator application and will be observing the results.  These two fairways were treated last year with Velocity and we will be using seedhead production to gauge our results.  Once we have seedhead emergence, we will then treat with Velocity again to test its ability to "knock seedheads off" the plant.  If this proves to be successful, we may be able to avoid some of the negative side effects of the spring growth regulator application in the future.  The early Velocity application will segway nicely into the planned Velocity program that we will carry out throughout the 2010 season.

For a turf geek, these are indeed exciting times in our battle against Poa annua!

Please stay tuned to this blog to follow the many progress reports that will be coming this season...

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