February Turf FAQs 2023

Quick round up of the major questions coming out of February. "Are you still here?" I joined the Syngenta team last February and I can't believe the year has gone so quickly. It's been great getting to meet so many of you at BTME and other events throughout the year.

Turf Frequently Asked Questions

Leatherjackets

It’s been a fairly chilly start to the year, which is a good thing for suppressing Leatherjacket activity.

The equation for insect damage to turf in the spring is a complicated one.

There is a temperature, at which both turf growth and insect activity are completely halted, (insects being cold blooded) Leatherjackets and chafer grubs are entirely at the mercy of the ambient temperature.

At some point it gets warm enough for turf growth to kick on, the turf pests will also be active then, but its not such an issue as we can generally out grow the damage.

The bit that gets complicated is between those two, when its warn enough for the insects to start activity but not yet warm enough for good turf growth.

My feeling is the years we see really bad turf damage from Leatherjackets are not just higher population years, but we hang for a while in that awkward temperature zone where they can reek havoc.

If you’ve not seen any activity, that’s great news but don’t sit back and assume you’ve cracked it, take some time to do some small-scale sheeting to ensure you get a clear picture of what’s going on in your soils.

We’ve had lots of feedback that it’s too cold for this – that’s good news! The process of monitoring is all about gathering the facts, if it’s cold and they are not active, we need to learn at what temperature they become active. We really are missing many pieces of the puzzle. So keep sheeting and let me know what you find.

It won’t be long before some courses will have to tolerate more damage than they’d like. If that does happen then one of the few strategies we have is to undertake some large-scale sheeting.

This method can be streamlined if you have built a decent database from small-scale sheeting to help you understand where and when to target.

We hope to have the full details of the Acelepryn approval for UK shared with you soon, already there for Ireland. But the challenge will be keeping best practice for the product once the mandatory stewardship is removed.

The issue being: most see the worst course damage in the spring – if I was seeing high levels of damage I’d want to apply a product to make it stop!

We’ve seen this in the research that in spring the Leatherjackets are pretty big and strong, much more likely to survive a glancing blow. If we get our timing right and apply in the autumn trials have shown we get much higher levels of efficacy as the larvae are much smaller and weaker.

 

Will the cold temperature kill them?

Glenn spoke to Dr. Pat Vittum of Massachusetts University about this – she sees frosts down to 1.5 meters and they survive, not sure if they dig deep below or just survive?

The cold temperature will certainly slow feeding and reduce impact, probably have a knockdown on a % of the population but it’s proven not to wipe an entire population out. The comparatively mild winters we see in the UK are unlikely to make a dent.

Bird pecking has started

From experience, I suspect pecking birds is more about the available alternative food sources drying up, eg farmer’s field with seed or insects going into hibernation. I think they just go for the easiest food source so even if you have low populations it may well be the simplest source of food for them when the cold weather has caused their last food source to disappear. It’s not necessarily related to high populations.

There are lots of scaring devices available but they all involve careful rotation and a fair bit of work.

Consider contracting a bird of prey (don’t negotiate directly with the bird!), but know for this approach to work it involves multiple programmed visits. It’s not a one and done thing or the birds will come back. But can have an impact if your suffering badly with bird pecking. You can search “Hawking” to find contractors in your area which might offer this ‘pest control’ service.

Dry Down started yet?

Don’t underestimate how quickly that dry-down will start. The effects of it are masked as we rarely see secondary heat stresses at this time of year but the month of March is usually the month we begin to turn.

It’s well worth thinking through your wetting agent strategy now, even if you don’t pull the trigger in March it’s worth being prepared for the optimum period for applying wetting agents, which is often much earlier than people realise.

Here is a link to a blog about when to apply wetting agents to golf courses.

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