Nematode and Greens update

      If you have played golf in the past 10 day you might have noticed some strange things going on with our greens.  We have multiple double lines across greens and some yellowing and brown areas.  It took us about a week to figure out what was going on.  Our greens have been burned by the nematicide Nimitz.  On 9/11/17 I applied the 3rd and last application of Nimitz to all greens.   We used this product two times before this and had no problems.  I used same rate, same spreader and the same person applying. When the damage started showing up I thought the lines were damage made by our Vibratory Roller.  Then we saw some browning occurring between the lines.  When this started to happen I realized we had turf that was burned.  I immediately thought it was the last Nimitz application the week before.  The lines we were seeing was the wheel tracks from the fertilizer spreader used to put the product down.  After I realized we had burn I sprayed our greens with foliar fertilizer to help them recover.  After 4 days I realized it was not better.  The salesman I purchased the product from came out and took a look at the greens.  He put me in contact with the Territory Manager of ADAMA Mike Daugherty. ADAMA is the company that distributes Nimitz.  After talking to him this was not the first he has heard or seen the product burn.  That did not make me feel any better.  My question was will my greens recover.  In all cases he said greens did recover.  He passed all information I gave him to Gary Custis.  Gary is the Technical Service Manager for ADAMA.  Gary came out Tuesday 9/26/17 and looked at the damage.  He said he did not think it was due to operator error.  I told him this was the 3rd time we used the product and had no problems before.  I also told him we had 10 pails of product.  6 pails had 1 batch # and those came from local Turf supplier.  The other 4 pails had a different batch # and they came directly from the factory.  The last 4 pails are the ones we used for the 3rd application.  I told him I thought something was wrong with the last 4 pails.  He did take a sample of product with him to have it checked.  He told me he thought the greens would recover.  I told him I was worried about 5 greens that were hurt the most.  Greens 3, 10, 11, 12 and 14 have more severe burning.  He still thought they would come back.  I’m not convinced yet they will come back completely.   He also offered to pay for any extra fertility product or trade for other chemicals. We will wait for him to check out if the sample has something wrong with it.  So until we get the greens healed up we are raising height of cut and going to push our greens with fertility to get them back.  Bad news is greens will be much slower than what they should be.  Once greens get back we will lower height and regulate them to keep them growing more evenly and slowly.  I will stay in contact with ADAMA hopefully we can find out what exactly happened here.  I believe something is wrong with the last 4 pails of product we got from the factory.  Too much active ingredient or the product is contaminated.  I am not convinced the product is working on the lance Nematodes in our greens.  Thankfully the weather has cooled back off and we are going to have some good bentgrass growing weather for the next 2 weeks. This has been a real blow to me and my staff.  The greens were in good shape except for the spots we had from nematode damage.  We will recover from this.  Hopefully in couple weeks it will be distant memory.

 

overlap burn

close up of burn

Tire marks