January Chemical Applications

Happy New Year to everyone!

Beginning the first week of January, we will be making a wall to wall application of winter weed pre-emergent herbicide.  We will also be adding some Round-Up to the application to kill off any existing weeds.  While making this application, we will have blue spray dye indicator to allow us to see where we have sprayed.  So if the course has a blue tint to it, this is the reason. 

After making the application, the Round-Up must stay on the plant for at least a 24-hour period, as the mode of uptake into the plant is via the vegetation above the ground.  In contrast, the pre-emergent chemical must be watered in within 10 days to get down to the soil.  Once in contact with the soil, it binds with the soil particles to form a layer.  As weed seeds emerge in the soil, they hit this chemical layer and die off, never making it to the surface.  In theory, the pre-emergent chemical does nothing to existing weeds and the Round-Up acts as a "post-emergent" to kill off what has already emerged.

At some point this month, we will also make an application of a more "poa annua specific" herbicide to the greens to clean up any weed populations.  This chemical works very slowly over the course of a couple of weeks.  I've noticed a small accumulation of poa annua on some of the greens.  Once we make this application, the poa annua will simply disappear.

If you have any questions about this process or anything else, don't hesitate to contact me via this forum or my email.

Thanks and have a great start to 2011!

Chuck McCaskill