Dollar Spot

Another disease, dollar spot, has been active in the roughs recently.  Our green and tee banks have been showing the most symptoms of the disease.  We do treat for this disease on our greens, tees and fairways, but do not treat for it in the roughs.  We have made a spot application this week to the areas with the most severe infestations.  This disease will not cause significant damage in our roughs.  Now that these areas have been spayed, we do expect them to grow out of the damage quickly.

The fungus that causes the symptoms of dollar spot is very active when temperatures are 60-80 degrees, with high humidities at night.  This past Saturday morning was perfect weather for the symptoms of the disease to show.  There was a heavy dew and a fog was present for the better part of the morning.  This dew and fog made the mycelium (the fungus) very evident in the morning.  The mycelium causes a blight on the leaf blade of the infected plants.  This picture (click to enlarge for a better view) is a perfect example of dollar spot in our roughs.

Here is a picture of one of the most heavily infected areas.  This is at 13 tee.  You can see the dew on the tee boxes and the fog.

These areas should recover is a shortly.  Since our roughs represent such a large area and disease symptoms are very scattered, it is not a normal practice to treat roughs for disease.