At the Kansas Turf Conference on December 4, 5 & 6, 2018 in Topeka we will have a new booth in the exhibit area for YOU to show off your best innovations!
Do you have a piece of equipment that you hacked together on your own? Something that saves you headaches? Are you willing to share your idea? If so – send me a quick photo and description. I’ll display it at the booth, with credit to you.
How about a method? Do you have a special knack for motivating your crew or co-workers? Write that down, and we can share it.
What about an innovative way to reach out to customers?
If you have a special tip or trick you are willing to share, send it my way. You can email me at kennelly@ksu.edu
At the booth we’ll have people vote on their favorite innovation, with a special prize for the winner!
Fungi love wet, humid conditions. Parts of Kansas have received a lot of moisture lately.
Here are a few recent examples:
Brown patch mycelium on a morning with fog and dew. If you look closely you’ll see the lesions, too.
Here is some foliar Pythium mycelium from another wet site:
You can see the white mycelial threads if you look closely. Also notice how the turf is so matted down and soggy/greasy in appearance.
At this location they had just sprayed tebuconazole, so how did the Pythium keep on rolling? Well, as you might remember, Pythium is not a true fungus, and some fungicides just do not work on it. Fungicides in the tebuconazole family (the DMI fungicides, FRAC code 3) have no effect on Pythium – you might as well be spraying water. For a list of products that DO have efficacy on Pythium foliar blight you can check this reference (p. 23) http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/ppa/ppa1/ppa1.pdf
Conditions for both Pythium and brown patch “should” be ending soon, and cool fall weather alone acts as a natural fungicide to slow those 2 diseases down just as our cool-season grasses find themselves in optimal conditions to grow. Recovery and seeding season is right around the corner.
And, finally, after 4 inches of rains there were mushrooms everywhere:
Some mushrooms are associated with fairy rings, and there is some information about that HERE.
How do mushrooms pop up overnight? They are actually kind of pre-made, hanging out in the soil in a small egg-like structure. When moisture comes they can expand quickly, like one of those sponge-animals that expands when you put it in a bucket. There are lots of time-lapse videos out there that show mushroom growth – here is one example:
The KGCSA Legacy Scholarship offers educational aid to the children and grandchildren of KGCSA members. A $1,000 scholarship will be awarded. Applications are due August 27, 2018.
Eligibility 1. One or more of the applicant’s parents or grandparents must have been a KGCSA member for five or more consecutive years and must be a currently active.
2. The student must be enrolled full-time at an accredited institution of higher learning, or in the case of high school seniors, must be accepted at such an institution for the next academic year. Graduating high school seniors must attach a letter of acceptance to their application.
3. Past winners are ineligible to apply the following year. They may reapply after a one-year hiatus.
Criteria for Selection 1. Applicants will be evaluated based on academic achievement, extracurricular and community involvement, leadership and outside employment.
2. The student must submit an original essay of up to 500 words.
More and more golf courses and other landscape sites are getting involved with pollinator conservation.
Are you curious to learn more?
There are some workshops coming up on July 31 in Chanute and August 1 in Lawrence, presented by The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and the Rush County Conservation District.
Here is the flier for more information – click this link to make the pdf file pop up:
We learned this news last week about the J.C. Pair Center, where we conduct multiple research trials and hold extension field days:
“MANHATTAN, Kan. — Reductions in base support from the state and recent enrollment declines have led to the decision to close Kansas State University’s 120-acre John C. Pair Horticultural Center in Haysville.”
Research farm opened in 1970, focusing on woody ornamentals, turfgrass
Each year we get samples into the lab where there is turf decline and people think there is a disease problem, but the culprit is thatch. The photo above is from a sample that came in this week.
Any time you have a turf problem, take a soil probe, pocket knife, or trowel, and take a look underground. I’m saying 100% of the time. Not 90%. E-V-E-R-Y time. You never know what you might find down there.
We see a lot of decline from thatch-related desiccation in the heat of summer, but we also see it in spring after thatchy turf gets the moisture sucked out of it by dry winter winds.
Here are a few others from prior years:
In this one, the turf had thick thatch and got very desiccated over winter and was not able to green up in spring:
At this site, they also had grub problems. They had applied an insecticide, but as you probably know, pesticides can get pretty tied up in thatch which makes it hard for them to do their jobs.
Think about the cost of all that stuff going through the sprayer, the time of the person applying those materials, and the fuel to power that sprayer Nozzles are small, and they don’t cost much, but they can really contribute to the success of an application and help maximize the bang for your buck on all those OTHER costs.
Anyway – as noted in the article cited above, nozzles determine the amount of chemical applied, the uniformity of the application, the coverage, and they can influence the risk of drift. Make sure you calibrate your equipment, replace worn nozzles, and follow all label instructions about application equipment for the materials you are spraying. A worn-out nozzle could easily be allowing 10% or more excess material to be applied, which = 10% more money. Equipment that is not calibrated right might be applying LESS than you need to get adequate control.
You might have your own on-site weather station. At minimum, you might have a soil temperature probe.
To supplement those, you can visit the Mesonet website and check for a station near you. Just click on a site, and some info will pop up.
For historical weather, click on the menu on the upper left, then go to WEATHER and then HISTORICAL WEATHER and you can select the days you want to consider. There are various options for soil temperatures and many other features. Soil temperatures can be important indicators for different management practices. Again, I highly encourage you to measure your own conditions on site, since there are lots of different microclimates in the world of turf and landscape. But it does not hurt to compare to a nearby weather station.
Are you interested in planting conifers, but you are not sure what to choose? The new Conifer Trees for Kansas publication provides details.
You can download a copy for free. There are color photos on nearly every page. The publication describes landscape evergreens suitable for specific regions in Kansas. Includes botanical and common names, photos, growth rates and dimensions, significant pests, with comments from the authors based on personal observations.
