Sprayer mishap

Sometimes there is human error in our jobs and sometimes there are mechanical errors.  The situation I am describing below was mechanical.

I was spraying the zoysia with RoundUp and Pre-emergent in February, the middle spray boom stuck on after I had left 16 tee area and drove around 15 green surround and in the area of 13 tee.  I noticed it was stuck on when I made a pass along 13 tee and saw the turf area that was not to be sprayed had moisture on it and was blue in color from the dye we use.  The boom switch was off but the sprayer was stuck on so I had to shut the pump off to get the spray to stop.  You will see from the pictures below some of the damage that occurred from this spray.  Most of the damaged turf that will dye is poa annua because it is susceptible to kill from lower rates of spray than the other cool season turf that is mixed in our rough areas which includes bluegrass, rye and fescue.  The last three turf species turn off color but will usually come out of the damage.  We use the lower end of the scale to kill the poa annua in our fairways.  Once we get some warmer days over the next few weeks, the area should heal without much issue.

I was going to mention this issue in a post at the time it happened but I thought I would wait until the actual damage showed up so if  you came out to play you would know what you were seeing.  One of the things we make sure to do is to stay completely off of our bentgrass approaches and of course greens when we are moving around the course with this tank mix so as to prevent a major catastrophe from occurring.  Next to collars, we will do light dobbing applications or brushing of material on plants that we want to remove.

This view is from behind 15 green looking toward 16 tee area.  This area in the deep shade and might have to be replaced  because the amount of shade helps to create a high population of poa annua.   If it does not come out of it in a couple of weeks, we will strip it up and replace it with fescue.

You can see the line off the edge of the tee.  I turned around at the path and came around the back of the green surround.  As you can see, there is a mixture of bermuda and cool season grasses in the mix.  The more orangish spots are poa annua which will probably not come back.  The remaining turf should improve over the next couple of weeks and you will not know anything happened.