Fusariummy

I came across this on twitter this morning. Noticed this while out cutting some leaners this morning. Sand channel on left quad-tine core, channel on right solid-tine. #issolidbetter ? pic.twitter.com/OiGXBFjOZ5 — Rob Steger (@SaginawCCturf) February 23, 2017 And then this rely: @TheFortressTurf Tried solid tines for the first time last fall, incorporated 30% more sand into the profile than we usually do. 3/4" — Rob Steger (@SaginawCCturf) February 23, 2017 This got me thinking about what I have noticed on my course. For the past few years we haven't been pulling a core and I also noticed that we were able to get about 30% more sand into our greens at aeration time but never really though much of it as it relates to solid vs core aeration. I think that when we core, it is difficult to get the entire plug removed. This leaves some of the holes still partially filled with soil/sand and reduces the amount of sand we can get into the hole. Getting a good core is dependant on a ...

You might have heard that my course has suffered some winter kill and I'm sure some of you have some questions about why this happened relating to GP and the MLSN as well as how I plan on recovering from it using the GP and MLSN. So is my dead grass a result of the MLSN or GP? If I was the only course to have winter damage I might think so. Even so, I do talk about some pretty extreme practices that could lead to winter death of my grass. Is winter use of primo the reason my grass died? Probably not I have talked about how I limit potassium going into winter as inspired by this research. While this is interesting stuff and something that I am trying, Doug and others have made it clear that by limiting potassium during the fall can decrease the winter hardiness of poa annua. Poa annua is the predominant grass species on my putting greens so obviously it would be a bad idea to limit K during the fall as this would lead to bad things happening. Low K hasn't hurt the poa on th...

Ok, so this is going to be a long one, but if you struggle with dollar spot and want to maybe reduce its impact on your grass and budget I promise it will be worth your time. Last week while at the 2017 Golf Industry Show I was a presenter at a panel discussion called " Successful Low-input Turf Management: Is it practical ?" One of the things I discussed was how the growth potential formula got my nitrogen rates on track and helped reduce the impact that dollar spot had on my course. After this talk and my release of the slides on my blog (linked above) I had a few people reach out with their similar dollar spot success. Of course I asked to see their fertilizer records and by no surprise to me, during times of typical dollar spot disease pressure, they were applying their highest rates of nitrogen (among other things). During my presentation on the growth potential and the MLSN I urged participants to take their growth potential nitrogen use recommendations and compare it t...

Today I did a presentation on Job Boards on the trade show floor at GIS. While there are many good paid versions, the free home-made versions can offer a lot of features that even the paid versions can't. Even if you still feel like the paid versions are best, I hope this presentation will help you look for features that matter to your operation and result in increased productivity instead of a needlessly complicated solution to a simple problem. Here's a link to my job board so that you can make a copy and try it out for yourself. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gidneAVXM2QZEvrC3JNAhCErdAqUC5eCbxel1ixq_Rk/edit?usp=sharing For a list of all my job board related posts click this link. http://www.turfhacker.com/search/label/job%20board And check out my presentation below.

Today I was honored to be a part of the EIFG panel discussion at the Golf Industry Show. My presentation was about how reduced fertilizer has benefited my golf course as I have implemented the MLSN soil guidelines and used the growth potential formula. Obviously the biggest impact of using less fertilizer is that you spend less money buying fertilizer. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I have seen impacts such as less weeds, disease and fuel use. When I think of it, there have actually been no negative impacts. Check it out below.