IPM Strategies

You have seen this last year, but once again we are trying to see what our fairways can tolerate when under pressure from pests and fungus.  Last year remember the 12th fairway above had much more annual bluegrass weevil damage and we were able to get it to recover over a few weeks.  This year it seems the insects were much further into the fairway this generation than the past.  To treat 33 acres of tees and fairways would cost about $9500.  We spent $500 spot spraying a total of 2 acres of tees and fairways where we thought feeding was above damage thresholds.  Above you see most of the damage on 12 is at the beginning of the fairway and on the cleanup pass where hardly anyone plays from.  You can also see the top picture where the bentgrass is already filling in the thinned out areas.  The easy thing would have been to spray everything but we learned last year that we can get by and try and get the grass to outgrow the damage.  This year the damage was far less and I attribute it to having more bentgrass on this fairway from allowing the poa to be eaten last year.  We also had a minimal impact on the environment and our budget by allowing this to happen.