Tired of Talking Take-All

As we discussed last month (The Patch is Back), we've been monitoring this year's Take-All patch closely.  Like many turf diseases, this pathogen operates in a fairly narrow soil temperature range.

The good news is that this past week's heat wave and record-breaking temperatures appear to have gotten us out of the "sweet spot" for Take-All to continue damaging the Bentgrass roots.

2" soil temperatures spiked to 81 degrees last week.

The bad news with this sudden burst of heat was that many of the areas which were damaged by Take-All quickly showed up when having to deal with heat stress--no roots and 96 degrees is not easy for a plant to survive.

Back to the good news. We kept the tees and fairways well hydrated throughout the week, and by Saturday it looked like we were starting to see some recovery, which is encouraging.

Again, this disease is somewhat random in when and where it appears, however we do see some patterns.   While it's not something we can graph in a straight line, there is a correlation between the amount of organic matter in an area, and the prevalence of  the disease.  The picture below shows that the forward tee on #3 got hit hard with Take-All, whereas the main teeing area, which was stripped and reseeded a few years ago, has little disease.

Going forward, we will continue to work to prevent Take-All,  This fall and winter there are a number  of different treatment protocols we will be looking at that will include different levels of fertility, applications of different trace minerals, as well as preventative fungicide applications.