Hi Guys,

Just a quickie (story of my life) update to mention that we’ve got some good growth coming from the weekend onwards and with any luck for most of you this will extend nicely into next week, if you look at the chart below for a number of locations across the U.K and Ireland.

The key is some good night temperatures from Saturday onwards which will take the ‘handbrake’ off growth for both Bent and Poa species in my mind…

GDDMarch2014

The graph above is downloadable here

What it shows is the value of GDD usage from a predictive perspective because we are looking at a growth flush and then nice gentle growth, fueled by Spring ‘sunshine and showers’ weather next week.

This may indeed also trigger some Fusarium but since we’ll have the growth as well, you should cut out most of the active disease without requiring a fungicide hit hopefully, but be on your guard nonetheless.

So if you’re sitting there with mottly greens, with the bent growing, the Poa sitting there not quite ready to wake up, this growth period should get things moving nicely especially if you have your nutrition in place.

The reason I’ve sent this through on a Wednesday is that you still have time to react before the weekend. So if I’m looking to kick the greens on after aeration, then I’d expect to use a granular product prior to the weekend to achieve this, if you have one down already, you should see a nice response from the weekend onwards through next week.

If you have a good surface, but you’ve lost some colour of late with the frosts on Monday morning and since, then a light liquid tonic using low temperature N forms (ammonium sulphate, nitrate, potassium nitrate, etc)  with iron will work really well to bring in the colour and most importantly uniformity.

Enjoy a ‘normal Spring’ for the next 7-10 days or so 🙂

hedgepigs

 

By the way, being a sad b*****d I looked at the GDD figures for 2014 and 2013 and discovered that my Hedgehogs came out of hibernation more or less exactly at 95 GDD, measured since Jan 1st. Sad for them to know that they’re part of a scientific experiment !

 

regards

Mark Hunt