Uncharted territory....

As usual the title of this post is probably more dramatic than it needs to be but, admittedly, I feel somewhat lost.  The weather has been interesting to say the least but my memory is short so I'm glad I have a weather station keeping records.  Unfortunately, I assumed the website I was using kept historical weather but it appears they only go back one year so I've lost portions of weather data pre Nov 1, 2015. Not a big deal but inconvenient to be sure. Luckily, I wrote about the fall weather in a post last December (go HERE) which included some screen shots highlighting conditions. Last year after my last spray we had close to 45 mm of rain but cold temperatures and snow cover by last week in November. For this year we've had plenty of rain (85mm of rain from start of October to middle of the month and another 106 mm since 3rd week in October) and mild temperatures which makes for very high disease pressure.

The main "goto" fungicide application sprayed in late October has seen a good portion of the rain (86 mm) since it was applied and based on last years results we can assume its efficacy has been affected.  I've had to reapply fungicides 2 times already to control developing disease and now I'm hoping for clear cold weather for next couple weeks if for no other reason than to make condition less conducive for disease development.

Because of disease pressure I've been attempting to manage the surface environment as best as I can by removing snow from the greens (which, for some areas, I've done 3X already) with a homemade tool Neil L. created.

1st version - all manual

2nd version - automatic lift!

I am limiting surface moisture and hopefully encouraging the ground to stiffen up. Frozen ground slows disease but can be bad news regarding ice since any rain may very well freeze on the surface if it doesn't run off.

It seemed a bit futile to remove the small amounts of snow we've been getting since they melt within a two or three days so I left some snow from the last skiff to melt on a few greens to see if I was wasting my time. But I ended up with this:

Pink Snow Mold

The fuzz is mycelium and I know it's the bad fungus since it is on the periphery of damage caused from an earlier bout of disease. The interesting part is it only appeared on those greens where I left the snow to melt. That says 2 things to me:

1. Despite the concern I have regarding any potential wear and tear on the greens by plowing the snow off the surfaces (time will tell) I am having a positive impact on controlling disease.
2. My initial sprays have lost much of their control

I did re-apply a mix of contact fungicide and so-so systemic fungicide on Sunday so hopefully I can get the control I need to get through the winter. As risky as it is, I will continue to remove the small snow falls to mitigate the development of any disease but I won't be able to do that for long especially if we get any amount of snow at one time.

I should point out that the certain greens like 3,5,10,11,13,16,17,18 and both PG's are 95 to 100 percent good and have not seen any new disease development since the last spray in middle of October. However, 2,7, front portion of 8,9,14, and 15 are the greens that are being quite troublesome.  15 is a real problem since all the "new" disease occurred under the tarp and now I'm concerned about putting the tarp back on. I know that green gets ice every year and ice kills outright so the tarp has to go down but I'm sure when and how that will happen.

The Month Long Post...

... believe it or not but I haven't been able to do more than a line at time but, although some comments are dated, I think the following info is still valuable.

It's the last week of October and I've officially wrapped up the fall treatments today by treating the last fairways on my list.  The last 3 weeks have been very wet (over 100 mm of rain since the start of the month) which has made timing the treatments tricky. Rain events after the treatments may have an impact on efficacy but we'll  have to wait and see next spring.  With respect to the treatments on the greens my last spray was this past Sunday and I have one more spare so depending on the weather and incidence of disease I have the ability to do one more spray.  That being said, a spray may not solve all our problems as last year all my sprays went great and some of the greens experienced some of the worst bouts of disease I've seen in a long while. As mentioned in the Sept. post I'm working on the hunch that last falls fertility was too low.  This year I went back to my old methods and used granular fertility as the backbone and augmented nutrition with foliar sprays.  Going in we had very little disease with most occurring in those areas I missed.  As it stands now there is small thumb sized disease spots :

(which developed before my last spray) that have me concerned but I'll keep an eye on the surfaces and see what, if any, progression occurs.

The last remaining task is to tarp #7 and #15 greens.  I am waffling on #7 mostly because I am disappointed with the outcome over the last couple years. Also, the removal of trees has increased the spring sun so it seems to bare off sooner than it had in the past.  The concern with that green is if it gets hit with ice damage, despite the increased sun, it will take a while to come back and sodding, especially now, is not an option.

Ice is a definite on 15 for a multitude of reasons including the obvious facts that it is surrounded by trees and is located in a depression at the base of a slope.  What I need to figure out is why the Enkamat is exacerbating the disease (Go HERE).

With all staff finished except for myself and Neil L. we find ourselves cleaning up loose ends.  We cleaned up the mounds in the parking lot (removed mulch and all the weeds) and needed to haul all the material away. I was able to borrow a dump trailer from TCR which is speeding up the process and while Neil hauls I'm picking away at edging cart paths which haven't been done for a number of years.

As the year winds down I will spend the next weeks reviewing and compiling numbers from this year and keep you updated as I glean information.