For many people in Jackson, fall means hunting season. For golf course maintenance it is POA hunting season! Most of the Poa that we will see in the spring tries to germinate this time of year. It is critical for next year’s Poa control to make well timed and accurate control applications now. By next week, the Poa we do have will be very visible from the applications we’ve made so far. Get ready to see the fairways turn a bit yellow and the patches of Poa turn white then brown. Once we can see it stressing out, we will kick it again with spot treatments of herbicide.
Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet Poa killer that works every time. Trying to kill a grass that is growing among grass is a tedious endeavor. Poa wages guerilla warfare by constantly producing seeds allowing it to change and adapt to resist control efforts. For example, if 100 Poa seeds germinate and 90 of those new plants die from the herbicide applications, the remaining 10 plants survive to produce 100’s more seeds of herbicide resistant plants. For this reason, we use various chemistries to knock the Poa down, then bolster the desirable species through aerification and fertilizer to out-compete the stressed Poa. The goal is to enter winter with healthy bluegrass fairways and Poa that is so sick it can’t survive the long winter.
In claiming to be a Poa free golf course I’m afraid I have sent the wrong impression that we don’t have ANY Poa. We have Poa free greens but we do have some Poa. We will always have some Poa and we will never completely eradicate it. The seeds are always in the soil and it will be an ongoing battle year to year. Some years will be more successful than others, depending on weather patterns and special events that limit control efforts. The goal is to keep it to a tolerable threshold the prevents establishment on greens, and I feel confident that is a fight we can win. Until instructed to do otherwise, we will do what it takes and we will not give up the fight in preventing Poa establishment.
As I was looking through pictures from last year’s Poa control efforts I was encouraged. The tee boxes on 1-3 have more Poa than last year and we have a plan to take care of those, but overall I feel there is less than last year. Here are a couple pictures showing some colonies of Poa on 14 fairway this spring and now. It is quite an improvement.
Poa on 14 Fairway June 15, 2014
Poa on 14 fairway Sept. 2, 2014
