has to feed off its own store of nutrient. If it has no available nutrient it will start to grow much later than fine grasses. Judicious fertiliser application in late autumn or during warm periods in the winter will provide a nutrient store for poa annua to grow in spring. More importantly, it will reduce the need for heavy applications of inorganic fertiliser in spring, reducing the total annual input of high salt fertilisers.
produces humus, humic and fulvic acids which, apart from being essential plant foods, ensure a slightly acidic pH which is what fungi need to survive. You do not have to chemically create acid conditions, fescue is the indigenous grass of most chalk downlands.
When poa annua goes yellow on an
irrigated green in summer it is actually dying. It has lost the ability to support itself, the only answer in sterile soil is to provide more nitrogen, a short term solution which adds to a long term problem.
The solution
Until you get the correct soil biology for fine grass, any physical or chemical remedy for poa annua control will be continuing and costly. Get the right soil biology and poa annua will convert by itself to perennial poa and, eventually, rye, fescue or bent depending upon overseeding, indigenous grass species and your management practices.
1.You must build a good beneficial fungal population in your thatch layer and soil. Thatch is fungal food and degrades to produce plant food. You can add fungal inoculants or grow your own with fungal dominant compost tea. Once thatch starts to degrade you can release nutrient for grass growth by light aeration with a sorrel roller or micro tines.
2.Make sure your root systems are colonised with mycorrhizae, these fungi favour perennial poa species and fine grasses, they will ensure more rapid development when overseeding or germination of the existing dormant seed bed. Mycorrhizae are available as a SeedCoat, in MycoGro Complete fertilisers and for new builds as Mycorrhizal Inoculant which contains all the basic components of the soil food web to activate sterile soil.
3. Get the soil chemistry right, balance the ratio of calcium, potassium and magnesium for optimum nutrient uptake to prevent unnecessary application of inorganic nitrogen.
4.Fertilise only as required, aerate with a sorrel roller first; only if this does not kick start growth, feed lightly with humic acids or seaweed to feed fungi. There is no hard and fast rule as to the amount of N and K required, but increasing cation exchange capacity will reduce fertiliser inputs and speed the conversion process especially on USGA specification rootzones.
5.Do not apply phosphate. 10 ppm of available phosphate is more than enough phosphate for the mycorrhizae to solubilise and make
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available to the plant for healthy growth.
6. Overseeding, if done properly, does speed up the conversion rate, especially if you have a thin sward or almost no fine grasses.
7. Do not let the poa annua starve in the winter. In spring time poa annua starts to grow later than perennial grasses because it does not have their microbial support system to access nutrient. In early spring poa annua
8. Analyse your soil for microbial activity, we can now measure total and active fungi and bacteria, protozoa and nematodes to take the guesswork out of soil management and reduce your costs to the minimum needed to promote healthy perennial grass.
Follow the above guidelines and you will start to see fine grasses colonise your sward in a surprisingly short time, saving on water, fertiliser, disease and dry patch management.
Martin Ward, Symbio. Email:
martin@symbio.co.uk. Website:
www.symbio.co.uk
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