Turfgrass Maintenance HUD

I've talked about how to efficiently collect and analyze data on a golf course using google forms and google sheets on this blog. These free cloud based tools make is super easy to collect data in the field and have in instantly sorted and analyzed for use with decision making.

The trouble with having multiple sheets for data collection is that you have to go to all these sheets to get the relevant data. My turfgrass maintenance HUD (heads up display) solves that problem by aggregating all my data into one place. Now I can see all the metrics that are important to my agronomic decision making process.

I threw everything I have at this preliminary HUD design. The idea is that I will cut out the stuff that I don't use but only time will tell what is useful in my day to day grass growing decision making process.

The foundation of this HUD is the =importrange() function in google sheets. This function allows you to pull data from another spreadsheet into the current spreadsheet. This is how I get all the information into one spot.

All of the weather data is pulled from my weather spreadsheet which automatically updates each day and calculates the growth potential, evapotranspiration rate, dollar spot potential and precipitation data.

The growth potential data will help me understand the growing conditions. Whether it's too cool for growth or too hot I will be able to make more informed decisions about how much I push the grass based off of this data.

I also pull this data into my fertilizer spreadsheet to help me determine my weekly fertilizer rates etc.

Thank you @PenderSuper for helping get this set up in my office. An easy reference to monitor the course conditions on the @KStateMGolf @KStateWGolf practice areas. Not all numbers are accurate, as we have been playing around with how to use it. pic.twitter.com/QjnPPM4ink
— Matthew Gourlay CGCS (@mattgourlaycgcs) March 6, 2018

My stimp data is pulled from my stimp meter reader sheet.

The growth rate data will give me a great idea of how fast the grass is growing and what kinds of issues I can expect whether it's disease, green speed issues, mowing frequency or clipping management.

Some might think that all this data takes away the art of greenkeeping. I think it allows me to produce better art as my understanding of how my grass is growing is now compiled in one central location where I can use it to make the best decision based off of the facts.

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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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