Inconsistent Green Speeds Last Week

Last week I had a number of people come up to me complaining about the inconsistency of the greens. Overall they were consistent with each other but from day to day the speed was changing drastically. This was due to the fact that the growth rate of the turf quadrupled on April 23. This was due to the warmer temperatures we have been experiencing especially the warmer overnight temperatures.

On the 23rd we applied a growth regulator (primo) to slow the vertical growth of the turf on the greens so that they will become more consistent day to day.

Something that we started last fall was to monitor the growth rate of the turf with each mowing of the greens. I have a blog post here that explains the process. This is a really cool tool for us because we can see how quickly the turf is growing and how it responds to our cultural practices. The above graph shows the growth rate over time. You can see on the 20th the growth rate takes a surge. Prior to this date we were only cutting our greens every 4-5 days with very consistent playing conditions. Ideally I would have applied the growth regulator before the surge in growth but this year we missed the mark by a week so it got away on us just a bit. You can see that a week after the growth regulators were applied the growth rate has now dropped to a reasonable rate again.

This is also a good reminder to use our practice putting greens before your round. They are always consistent with the greens on the course. Use them to prevent finding out the greens are slow on the first hole!

By cutting every other day and rolling daily we should now be able to keep the greens consistent day to day for the rest of the season.

Turfgrass speedo is still my most important tool for managing turf growth after 4 years.

It wasn't the easiest year for growing grass , but the conditions were still pretty good. Almost 4 years ago exactly, I came up with the idea of comparing actual clipping yields to the "ideal" clipping yield or the clipping yield adjusted using the Growth Potential Model . Since then, it has proved to be a much more useful tool to manage growth than I originally thought . It has been almost a decade since I started making observations on plant health and playability and how it relates to the clipping yield. I have been constantly searching for ways to get the growth rate right as often as I can and this tool seems to be the best way I have seen so far, and might ultimately, be the best way going forward. To prove this point I will discuss in a future post, the success I've had with pest control in the past few years (for the most part (Not withstanding the times where I think my greens are dead but they actually aren't...thanks T)). Never needed less There are

Do you have enough?

I recently discussed how we can use fertilizer ratios to simplify how much fertilizer we apply to help us keep above the MLSN guidelines . When we get a soil test done it is a static amount of nutrients found in the soil. Even if you are above the MLSN guidelines at the time of testing, it doesn't guarantee that you will remain at or above the guidelines as the grass grows and consumes nutrients. There is math that you can use to determine exactly how much nutrient you need to apply to ensure that you remain at or above the MLSN guidelines. For many, this is much too complicated. For that reason I made a quick cheat sheet to help you determine how much of each nutrient you can expect to use each year based off a few different annual nitrogen rates. Nutrient use is based primarily on nitrogen use so the left 2 columns are a few different nitrogen rates. The columns for each nutrient are in PPM and are designed to help you look at your current soil test PPM (mehlich 3) and determin

How to quantify nutrient content in liquid fertilizer

In a recent post, I discussed how it was actually cheaper to spray soluble vs granular fertilizer. What about if we use pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? How do we even figure out how much nutrient we are applying with pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? Before I learned that you could simply dissolve soluble fertilizer in water and apply it in a sprayer, I was a big user of pre-mixed liquid fertilizers. One of the issues I initially had was figuring out exactly how much of each nutrient I was applying. The math wasn't as straightforward is it was with granular fertilizers. It turns out, it's actually not that difficult but requires an extra step. First, we need to convert the liquid volume into a mass. Many products will have the product density displayed on the label or you can look in the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for that information as well. No SDS? Should you be using products without an SDS? Even if this information isn't included on the label it is very easy to figure out. All

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