Captioning provided by
Disability Access Services
at Oregon State University.
[music]
>> Golfers have a very high level of-
they expect a very high
level of maintenance
when they go onto a golf
course putting green.
Even 1% disease would be
considered unacceptable
because 1% disease is actually a lot
when you're looking for a
perfect roll of the golf ball.
Golfers expect to have very
little blemishes, if any at all.
You can see the fungus is growing,
this white stuff around the edge
of the diseased patch is really active.
And it's really cottony and thick.
You can really literally
pick it up with your finger.
So what we're trying to do is find a way
to manage, control this
disease without using fungicide.
So we have quite a few
different techniques.
So I just need to mix up
this bottle real quick,
doesn't take very long.
With these alternative products,
we're finding that when we're mixing
the mineral oil and the sulfur
and the phosphite and
the rolling together,
in the end we actually
are using less pesticide
than what we would
have done in the past.
So actually I have
this, it's kind of a-
It is a little bit like
Ghostbusters, isn't it?
So I have this string here
that tells me the height I need to stay
so that little piece of
steel is hanging from a string
and it needs to just barely
scrape the top of the grass.
And then you can hear the
metronome in the background.
[beeping]
[liquid spraying]
So when you put all of them
together, it does pretty well,
so we're pretty excited.
[motor rumbling]
If you take a step back,
you can see just how much
disease is around those plots.
And then you have this plot
here that has very little disease
and frankly that's remarkable.
I think they're just trying to prepare
for when the chemicals
won't be available.
And then there's also, perhaps-
I think golf course superintendents,
they feel like they're kind
of stewards of the environment,
and they only want to apply fungicides
when it's absolutely necessary.
And there's also public pressure
that is pushing us in
that direction as well.
We don't know that it's going to
be a long term solution forever,
but we can definitely reduce
the amount of fungicides
we apply to turf,
so that's good.
[golf ball clunking]
[music]
[END]
