It’s no longer summer so the great hope is we can put the pain of any Dollar Spot flair ups behind us.
My soft warning here is, as long as the climatic conditions are right, dollar spot can still be in the game.
We’ve had reports of outbreaks in the UK & Ireland as late as December and as early as February in some years.
It reality can come any time the humidity is high and the temperature is warm enough.
The reason for the soft warning now is two fold:
1) Scars that stay with you;
Some of the worst dollar spot damage I’ve seen this year was at the end of winter.
In autumn when growth potential has lowered, is very unlike a July bout of disease, you don’t get those recovery temperatures to get back turf cover.
And you can be left with open turf scars all winter long until spring growth returns.
2) Late season outbreaks can be very severe;
Of all the outbreaks of dollar spot I’ve tracked this year in the trials the most damaging has been the September peak.
The autumn and winter offers potential for very high levels of humidity and extended periods of leaf moisture.
There is nothing in the rule book to say October – December are safe months, do keep tracking the Smith- Kerns in Turf Advisor and take actions if you are seeing extended periods of high disease pressure.
You can see from my weekly assessments below that the untreated areas of Tee’s have lost more turf area in September that at any other point in the season.
Hopefully it turns dry and cool fast and we shut down dollar spot for the year but that is by no means guaranteed unfortunately.
