Rutgers Cooperative Extension
Seasonal updates on ornamental, nursery, and turf pests.
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Rutgers Turf Blog - Articles on turfgrass diseases and cultural practices for the commercial turfgrass industry. Subscription available via RSS.
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Today’s rain got me thinking about insect damage in turfgrass. Actually I’ve been thinking about insect damage in turf for a week or so, ever since I saw a flock of birds pecking sod webworms out of the bentgrass plots behind the Plant Diagnostic Laboratory.
Flocks of birds on turfgrass are usually up to no good. Photo: Richard Buckley, Rutgers PDL
Right along with stormy skies, the Plant Diagnostic Laboratory is firing up with golf turf samples. We’ve seen it all lately: anthracnose, summer patch, slime molds, take-all, Pythium root diseases, annual bluegrass weevils, black turfgrass ataenius, and lots of wear and tear. Here are a couple of random notes from the last week or two:
Slime mold–just because it’s cool. Does this look like dog yak? Photo: Howard Szczurek
Cryptomeria samples have been coming into the Plant Diagnostic Laboratory with increasing frequency this spring. Their issues with winter damage, particularly this year, have been chronicled on this blog. We’ve also had a couple of samples diagnosed with Maskell scale in the lab this spring, too. Pretty routine set of samples, just a few more than usual, until last week that is… [Read more…]
A boxwood per day helps keep the doctors away! All of us here in the Plant Diagnostic Lab must be pretty healthy then–since the boxwood blight outbreak in 2013, we get a dose of dead boxwood almost every day.
Boxwood blight leaf lesions. Photo: Richard Buckley, Rutgers PDL
In this article:
Where would we be without rusts? Rust diseases, to a plant pathologist, are anything but boring. In fact, this group of plant diseases contains some of the most destructive pathogens of vascular plants. Throughout history, rust epidemics have caused famine and wrecked the economies of entire civilizations. Important food and fiber crops affected by rust diseases include bean and soybean, grains (barley, corn, oat, and wheat), asparagus, cotton, pine, apple, and coffee (coffee rust is particularly troublesome in Guatemala right now). Rust diseases also affect a wide variety of ornamentals – landscape plants, greenhouse and nursery crops, Christmas trees – you name it. [Read more…]
A sample diagnosed with take-all patch of creeping bentgrass was the highlight of the turfgrass submissions to the Plant Diagnostic Laboratory this week. This sample marks the first in the seasonal transition on golf courses from diseases common to late-winter and early-spring (snow molds/yellow patch) to the late-spring and early-summer problems (take-all/brown ring patch). Yes, it was an exciting day for the turfgrass pathologist!
Take-all patch on a plug of ‘L-93’ creeping bentgrass. Photo: Sabrina Tirpak, Rutgers PDL
