I did the latest dollar spot assessment yesterday morning (5th November) while writing this.
I was hoping by now we’d be well into cooler weather, and I could claw back some time each week by closing out the dollar spot trial.
As you can see from the graph the November outbreak of dollar spot has been the second most damaging of the year.
With more pressure on the Smith Kerns model moving forward I’d urge you to keep monitoring the situation on your site.
The early September outbreak was slightly worst in terms of disease cover, but even in the untreated (blue line in the graph above) due to good temperatures we did see recovery over time.
The worry this time of year is we don’t know how much good growing weather we have left, so disease scars now could stick with us until spring.
As you can see the dollar spot pressure is high compared to historic levels.
What I’m seeing more of now is Microdochium patch disease moving into areas of turf damaged by the dollar spot.
We’ve seen this before in anthracnose trials late in the season, but It’s my first time seeing it with MP/DS.
It’s the dead but also damaged/weakened turf allowing the pathogen in easily, from there it may spread to surrounding turf.
On a positive note the trial is still looking good, the last application went down ahead of the outbreak and the results of that preventative application are evident.
I’ll be talking all things Dollar spot, and the intervention options available at the BIGGA South East conference, Brighton, 20th November.
If anyone is attending and wants to know more, or ask a question, I’d recommend it!
Hopefully see you there!
