Yarrow during drought

A few years ago I seeded yarrow into the sand trap surrounds at the advice of Armen Suny. This "weed" is perfectly adapted for the tough growing conditions surrounding sand traps, it stays green even when it is extremely dry, provides a good playing surface when mowed, and spreads to provide a good stable edge to a trap.

This year we have been experiencing the worst drought since they started taking records. Needless to say we have had trouble keeping some of our bunker surrounds in good shape. Today I noticed that the yarrow was still doing great, despite the difficult growing conditions on the course and especially on the bunker edges. Here are a few pictures to show just how happy the yarrow is.

The collar is on a steep slope. Any hand watering will wash out the trap. The yarrow is creeping in from the trap edge towards the green in these tough growing conditions. Without the yarrow the trap edge would completely collapse.

Close up of the yarrow creeping back from the bunker edge

Yarrow in a well irrigated bunker edge.

The only thing that is green on this unirrigated slope is the yarrow. Even the fescue and moss are brown

green happy yarrow on a very tough growing environment

I casually seeded my bunker surrounds a few years ago but am now considering an all out effort to bring more of this plant to my course. Aside from bunker surrounds I can also see this used for steep slopes, and even fairways and rough. I might even sow some into some "naturalized" areas so that I can start a self sowing chain reaction.

I am completely sold on the use of yarrow on golf courses. Water is a precious resource and anything that we can do to reduce that usage and still achieve our goals of producing nice looking and playing golf courses should be done. I think it's time that we take a serious look at using other drought tolerant plants for widespread use on golf courses.

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

Fusariummy

Search This Blog