Poa Control

With the start of Phase II I thought this was an ideal time to discuss Poa control.  A major reason for Phase II is to eliminate the Poa Annua common name Annual Bluegrass.  Annual Bluegrass is a finicky turf to deal with especially here in the Midwest.  I won't get into great detail as I've discussed this topic at lengths in other communications but basically with our weather the Poa can have challenges surviving.  With the fumigation going on we will eliminate all Poa in the areas we fumigate.  The new bentgrasses selected for seeding have been genetically design with growth habits to help crowd any encroaching Poa out but I'd be foolish to say it can be done at a 100% level.  That being said, technology is our friend.  With Poa becoming more of a challenge and topic of discussion on golf courses throughout the country and world more research has gone into controls.  Recently a chemical company produced a product called Velocity, a specific herbicide for controlling Poa Annua.  Superintendents in the area have been using it and testing at different rates on different turfs to see control efforts.  Tom Prichard of The Ivanhoe Club, my mentor and former bass, recently used the product on all his 30 greens with great success in eliminating encroaching Poa over the years following their renovation of the course.  With hearing success from other Superintendents I decided we'd try this product on our putting green and golf center green as both have some Poa encroachment and both have the desired turf for our regrassing project.  If this product has the success here as others are seeing this will give us a great tool at keeping our newly seeded greens to a high percentage of bentgrass and keep the pesky Poa out.  More experimenting will go on through the end of the summer and fall but I'm confident this will work great for us.

Below is a picture of our putting green.  I've circled 4 areas on the picture, what I've circled are specs of Poa.  This past Saturday we sprayed the greens with Velocity and we are already seeing the Poa begin to yellow out.  I'll continue to monitor and compare photos of the same area and compare the results as time passes by. 

Again, circled areas are specs of Poa in our putting green.  We'll continue to monitor changes.