Fusariummy

I will probably come at no surprise to you to learn that I think a lot about what I do at work. A few weeks ago Chris Tritabaugh shared a tweet with his followers (I'm one of them) that made me think....about how I think...I think?   The article explains how successful people spend a lot of time thinking and not actually doing physical work. Now I am in no way implying that I am successful. I think that is a rather subjective thing to proclaim. I do, however, spend a lot of time thinking about grass....and stuff. Why Successful People Spend 10 Hours A Week Just Thinking @BrianScudamore https://t.co/fTWSq4QuxX via @Inc — Boyd Montgomery (@montybr) April 10, 2016 When talking with other superintendents about how I blog the question often arises, "how do you find the time to blog?" The answer came to me when I read the above article about thinking. For me, blogging is thinking, it is putting what I am doing and thinking in writing. It just so happens that I share this wi...

We are now safely enough into Spring that I can reflect on the Winter fusarium battle. We aren't in the clear yet, though, as we have had to battle fusarium right until the end of June in some years. The recent record breaking hot weather has sure helped but as we return to normal April weather this week I fully expect the fusarium to make a resurgence. As the title suggests, this winter was an absolute breeze when dealing with fusarium on all parts of my course. The weather was abnormally warm and wet but this didn't seem to make the disease worse as you might think. I have often hypothesized that it isn't the weather that makes fusarium bad during the winter, it's our maintenance practices that do . Sorry, I literally have no fusarium to show you.  I have talked and seen other courses that did not have the same luck as me. Of course no golf course is the same and there are a ton of factors involved. The reason I think I had such good success this winter is a combinat...

I've been measuring clipping yield on my greens for the past 5 years. The reasoning for this is to get a good idea of how fast our grass is growing. After all, this is one of the most important things to know as a greenkeeper as described in Micah Wood's book " A Short Grammar of Greenkeeping " which I highly recommend you buy. In it he defines greenkeeping as "managing the growth rate of the grass to create the desired playing surface for golf. All of the work done to the turf is centered around managing how fast the grass will grow. This is consistent across all parts of China. And the best golf course conditions will be created when the superintendent is able to create just the right growth rate." How fast is your grass growing? The more I learn about our profession the more I agree with this statement. When I was a young superintendent the growth rates of my turf were all over the place. We were hit with huge growth flushes without notice and were left ...

I'm going to try and talk myself out of aerating in the traditional way each spring. Won't you join me? Last year I asked " Is Core Aeration a Thing of the Past ?" This year I am wondering if solid or core aeration where sand is worked into holes is needed at all? Here I will try and find some reasons why I should and should not aerate my greens in the spring time. Before we start I'll go over the traditional reasons to aerate and then I will discuss why I might be able to get those benefits in different ways. Traditionally we core aerate to remove organic matter, reduce compaction, increase soil air and increase drainage. That's pretty much it. Core aeration and filing solid holes with sand are two ways to do this but surely there has to be other ways especially with the new developments we have made in the past 10 years or so? For the past 3 years we have been deep tine aerating our greens in early October. This was because we had developed some troublesome ...

This was a quiet comment I heard at a talk I did recently about my experience with the MLSN. This is something I hear a lot and a source of some confusion that I hope to clear up. To apply this little fert safely you need to know what and when to apply it. It's all about timing. A lot of people associate the MLSN with reducing fertilizer. This can be the case with nutrients that are in excess in the soil but my fertilizer reductions haven't been the result of using the MLSN entirely. If you are removing nutrients from the system you will eventually need to add those back in the form of fertilizer. If you read closely on my blog you will learn that the huge reductions in fertilizer on my course have been the result of using soluble source fertilizers, halving my nitrogen rates all across my course , and simply withholding nutrients on my fairways as a Park Grass Experiment inspired experiment. The lack of fertilizer on my fw has nothing to do with the MLSN. For the first year ...