The submission lines are open for all supers to submit their dogs for consideration in the calendar but you’ve got to get them into TurfNet before the end of July.

Tips for submitting your dog’s photo
Our own Dr. Toni Bucci, Business Manager of BASF Turf & Ornamentals, has provided some tips on how to submit your photos to Turfnet. To learn more visit this URL: http://www.turfnet.com/view_news.php?obj_id=361.

The TurfNet Superintendent’s Best Friends Calendar…it’s the original, don’t settle for imitations.

Turfgrass diseases & conditions: Updates for New England golf courses and turf professionals
It has been very cool this spring so far. Last week’s temperatures in Cape Cod were low 40s with showers. We have had plenty of rain in the area, but golf courses’ turf is not saturated. There have been many days of light rain. The turf in my backyard looks awesome…which is a bio-indicator that it is a very easy grass growing year so far.

We have some reports that dollar spot is active in southern NY and Long Island. Reports of Waitea patch have diminished. Soil temps are in the high 50s to low 60s. Most golf course superintendents are on a 14-day preventative schedule right now.

On a side note, BASF Turf & Ornamentals is collaborating with Matrix on a U.S. Open sponsorship at Bethpage, NY.

Golf course superintendents experience positive trial results with Honor™ fungicide
Thavy Un, one of our Marketing Managers at BASF Turf & Ornamentals, visited New England this week to support our Honor™ fungicide demonstrations. Note to all—no matter when you visit New England…bring a jacket.

Initial observations from golf course superintendents who have demo’d Honor include…”quicker recovery from aeration when Honor was applied three days before,” and,” Very quick green-up response after the Honor response.”

Looks like we have another winner on our hands! I am excited to see our Honor fungicide product launch this fall.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I will be bringing three lucky superintendents to the Red Sox/Yankee game next Thursday. Look for me on TV; I will be the one wearing the Red Sox cap.

North Carolina State University TurfFiles: http://www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/diseaseID

What’s nice about this site is you can select the type of turfgrass you have and the month, and it provides a list of diseases that affect the host turf during that time. Below is an example for anthracnose.

Responding to maintenance budget reductions, superintendents across the country are doing even more with less.

• How are the added responsibilities increasing superintendents’ value among members and management?

Comment Below and read what industry peers have to say.

Naturalized project at FarmLinks
I caught up with Dr. Scott McElroy, professor of weed science at Auburn University, to discuss a trial being implemented by BASF Turf & Ornamentals and Auburn to evaluate different management practices with BASF chemistries. Often, these naturalized areas are one of the most neglected and misunderstood areas on a golf course. Through this trial, we hope to shed some light on what practices or combination of practices will benefit these non-play areas. Listen as Scott explains some of the treatments being made!

Example entries from their blog, www.turfdiseases.blogspot.com, include when to apply preventative applications for fairy ring and take-all patch and how to tell the difference between brown ring and yellow patch.

Participating pathologists include Lane Tredway, Ph.D. from N.C. State, Megan Kennelly, Ph.D. from Kansas State, Jim Kerns, Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Frank Wong, Ph.D. from the University of California – Riverside and John Kaminski, Ph.D. from Penn State.

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This week we officially welcome four employees to our BASF Turf and Ornamentals team: Product Manager, Missi Koenig; Sales Specialists, David Schell and Brian McCaffrey; and Senior Sales Specialist, David Maubach.

Koenig, Schell and McCaffrey come to BASF from the recent Whitmire Micro-Gen acquisition. Maubach is transitioning from another business within BASF to provide even more experience to our talented T&O team.

Here’s a rundown of how and where our new team members will help distributors, golf course superintendents, nursery and greenhouse growers, and lawn care operators select science-based, chemical solutions for growing healthy turf and plants.

To download the BASF T&O Territory Map for new and current employees click here, or place your cursor   over the map, right click and select “save target as” to download to your desktop.

Product Manager Missi Koenig
In her new role as product manager, Koenig will draw on her specialty market experience, to liaise with the Whitmire-line production group, communicate production demand and packaging, work on new development projects, and aid in product/positioning of the acquired Whitmire-line products within the BASF Turf & Ornamentals portfolio.

Sales Specialist Brian McCaffrey
McCaffrey, who served as Whitmire Micro-Gen’s horticulture national sales manager for mid-south and West Coast sales, will now cover South Florida in his new BASF T&O position as sales specialist.

Sales Specialist David Schell
Schell will join the BASF T&O technical team supporting the Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey area. Schell carries his experience as horticulture regional technical specialist at Whitmire Micro-Gen covering the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic U.S into his new role.

Senior Sales Specialist David Maubach
Maubach joins the T&O group from the BASF Pest Control business where he was a sales specialist in the Midwest for the past two years. He also spent more than 20 years with the crop protection business at BASF. His new territory for T&O includes Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, and North and South Dakota.

Talked turf with The Ohio State University’s Turf Pathology and Weed Science staff and faculty
BASF Senior Technical Specialist Kyle Miller and myself met with The Ohio State’s Joseph W. Rimelspach, Extension Pathologist from the Plant Pathology Department, and Todd Hicks, Program Coordinator for the Turf Pathology Program. I very much appreciate Kyle Miller putting these appointments together and inviting me to take an active role in the discussions. These meetings help us to better understand all of the opportunities there are in working with these university contacts, both from the perspective from field sales and technical service. Next, we met with John Street, Ph.D., OSU Weed Science, and Deb Holdran, Research Technical Representative for Dr. Street and Dr. Dave Gardner.

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