Head Green Keepers January 2022

Disease on Greens

Happy New Year everyone, here’s to a nice, dry and warm golfing season in 2022. I for one will be eager to make improvements to the golf course in preparation for the new season.

Unfortunately, we start the new year with some relatively bad news, which is the spread of Microdochium Patch disease on the greens. This is more commonly referred to as Fusarium, and most greens have now got it, although on some it is very mild indeed. However, on areas such as the 18th, 4th and 6 green, it is quite a large outbreak. I just wanted to explain what the disease is and what measures we must take in the future to limit the spread.

As you will see from the pictures, or when you are out there playing, the disease takes the form of round orange-brown patches, usually quite small to begin with, but they can enlarge if left alone for time. The scars look dark when wet and paler when dry and this disease usually attacks in the autumn and winter periods.

The fungus responsible is always present in the soil, and it can spread at any time of year, however most of the time in the summer you don’t tend to see it as the grass growth is a lot stronger.

All grass species are susceptible, however annual meadow grass, the more dominant species in our greens is most severely affected. The conditions in which fusarium can thrive are mild, humid and wet conditions, as well as shaded areas with poor air circulation. In general, areas of greens that are weak in the summer time, are more susceptible in the winter time, especially on USGA green constructions.

Over the late summer period, the greens were fairly weak and I believe this has had an effect on the surfaces at this time of year. In late autumn, there was some really high disease pressure and a preventative fungicide was applied which worked lovely, keeping the disease at bay and, with added seaweed, iron and phosphite applications to harden the grass plant, the greens were looking reasonably healthy.

Just before Christmas a further application of seaweed, iron and copper was applied as well as a dew control product. It is really important that when disease pressure is high, that moisture control is looked at. By using a product to stop dew formulating on the greens can be a massive help.

However, despite all this there was still a bit of disease lingering here and there. During the Christmas and New Year period we experienced a lot of rain fall (which helps to explode the disease spores and spread them. Temperatures were very mild for this time of year with one day hitting 16 degrees!! So, with all the rise in temperatures and the humidity, unfortunately the disease has spread faster a lot further than anticipated.

Having spoken to several other greenkeepers around the country, as well as viewing social media it is clear that we are not alone in this predicament. Some people have reported success with multiple fungicide applications, some have used fungicides, dew products, irons etc and have still been hit very hard. This has been one of those perfect weather storms for the disease to be very active.

So, the first stage of recovery is to achieve control. To stop the spread as quickly as possible. We are going to spray a specific contact fungicide called Medallion, with its contact activity tackling damaging pathogens on the grass leaf, thatch and soil surface.

After this chemical control we will look at adding some much needed biology into the profile using two products. These products will add beneficial bacteria into the sward to aid recovery and promote more root growth. We will also be applying some further dew control as previously mentioned, as well as our monthly seaweed, iron and phosphite soil conditioner.

Hopefully this will achieve the control we need, as well as receiving some help from a colder spell of weather, which should also aid the fight against disease.

The second stage of recovery is to feed the greens again with a granular winter feed. This will again help to harden the plant, but also give it a boost in times of any growth days. This will aid recovery. We will also look at carrying out some minor maintenance on the greens, certainly the more heavily affected areas.

We have firstly begun to micro solid tine the greens to provide air into the profile. The biology will also aid from this aeration work. We will also consider using some micro hollow coring to help us promote new growth. This will be weather dependent.

Finally we will also be punching some new creeping bent seed into the affected areas. This will encourage new growth and help to fill in the disease scars. Bent is much more able to fight against disease, and so the more bent grass we have in these greens the better.