Not sure if many of you know but I decided to take 5 acres of fairways (holes 2,13,14,15) and not make any fungicide applications on them this season. I wanted to see how much the grass can take without relying on fungicides. We used only a growth regulator and nutrients all season thus far and today was the first day of disease outbreak all season. The middle photo is brown patch and the bottom photo is dollar spot fungus. Not bad considering how much rain we have gotten along with the high humidity most of the summer. The brown patch will disappear once we get through today and tomorrow, the dollar spot we will keep using nutrients to help try and control it. I always said if things got bad, I would make a rescue fungicide treatment, but what we found today does not warrant it. Seeing our results so far this year, next year I may expand my experiment to 10 acres (about 1/3 of our total fairway acreage). The key is plant health, good drainage and good sunlight. We took a fairway that was shady (15), we took a poorly drained fairway (13) and 2 par 3 holes that do not get much cart traffic (2,14) to run this experiment. If we can continue over the next few years to see these results, we will save some money and reduce our carbon footprint on the environment. It is important to remember that preventative sprays are usually 1/2 the rate of a curative spray so it is vital to make sure you keep up with plant health throughout the season. So while you may see the sprayer out weekly, it may only be applying nutrients and not always chemicals.
