The saga of the 16th green

One of my favorite greens here at WGCC is the 16th green.  A beautiful surface that has great character.  Normally a green we we love with its bountiful sunshine, great air movement and abundent drainage, but this year it has proved a struggle.

You may have seen me at various times, poking and prodding at the green, several times with pathologists, superintednents and others walking the surface.   It's had it's share of samples taken from it and sent to labs all over the area.  I began to notice small irregular patches of dysfunticonal turf in several areas at the start of summer.  At the time it was diagnosed as a variety of poa annua that was not adapting to the climate at the time.

I had some samples sent off to look at chemical and physical composition of the soil and for any lingering disease.  All came back normal and the green bounced back.  As it started again, I sent more samples off looking at physical structure to determine if the sands we have been topdressing with had been causing any layering issues or dry down irregularities.  Again nothing found,  so I sent off some pictures to another friend of mine, a former turf professor now working as an advisor to a chemical company.  He wondered if we had tested for nematodes.

Now nematods are a small microscopic worm that inhabits all root systems and can cause injury.  Normally found in sandy soils in the south and problematic in the hot summer time, these worms feast off the roots structure weaking them when the plant is under stress.  Our 16th green is in a great growing environment, not under any undue stress and not a sandy soil.  Well as you can tell by now the samples I sent off to Virginia Tech came back with a high count of nematodes.

The soil aways contains nematodes, there are at least 25,000 species, and only certain ones cause issues, so trying to define how many and what type in any one location is difficult.

The chemistries to eradicate the worm is no longer on the market due to EPA issues.  So we are left to using a variety of methods re: "witches brews", to fight these parasites.  Anyway, everything seemed to be moving the right direction, to where most people never noticed any issues.

Well with this weekends high temperatures, the picture below show the damage in those stressed areas from the nematode presence.

We have applied more of the various brews to the soil (all natural) in the hopes of stemming the impact and will be researching all known practices this fall to work up a plan for next year.   We have tested several greens and recieved various counts, which even with todays science cannot define if we will have a problem or not down the road.  So when you see me kneeling down on the green with my knife in my hand, I'm not going crazy, just trying to stay ahead of whatever nature has tossed our way.