Snow Mold in Our Future???

[Organic a go go]

Up here in N. IL I don't think we've had more than 3 or 4 days so far in 08 without snow cover which has me wondering if we'll see more snow mold in the spring. Research tells me there are two types of snow mold caused by
Typhula and Microdochium which cause gray and pink mold respectively. Any of you organic guys dealt with this in the past??

[Smallaxe]

Up here we are lucky to have 5 or 6 months without snow. I studied all the fungi diseases and tried to identify them in the various lawns that were heavily watered. I never found anything that eventually killed the grass, just alot of "maybes" or "could have beens".

My thinking is , that if the ground is frozen under the snow probably the fungi are not growing much. You may not have alot of frost in your area, so perhaps it is growing. This may be an opportune moment to spray the foliar CT :) Perhaps every spring should start out with a good dose of compost or CT. Who knows?

[PSUturf]

If the ground wasn't frozen when the snow cover began there is a good chance you will have snow mold, particularly if the grass was long when the first snow covered it. Usually an aggressive raking after the snow melts and the ground thaws is all you need to do to get the turf growing again. Snow mold usually does not kill the plant.

Anybody know if a compost application just before the first snowfall will help suppress snow mold?

[ICT Bill]

One of the causes of snowmold is too much N in the soil, probably why it shows up with long grass. I know of a few golf courses that apply humate or humic acid when the grass is going dormant but before the first snows.

The humic acid ties up the extra N in the soil as the beneficial microorganism matabolism has slowed way down and can't use it for food so it sucks up the nutrients and binds them until it get warm