How Does My Grass Grow? 7 Years of Clipping Yield Data.

When I first learned about the growth potential formula it blew my mind. Until that point I was always taught that grass grew a certain way with peaks of growth in the Spring and the Fall like the image below.

https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/lawn-care-calendar

In some climates, cool season turf grows exactly like the image above but this wasn't what I was seeing on the West Coast of Canada.

The growth potential formula suggested otherwise as it used data from my specific location. Instead of the two peaks of growth it showed a single peak of growth for my location.

Growth potential calculated for my specific location

After a few years of collecting clippings the wrong way, Micah Woods finally convinced me to measure the clippings with a pail and covert this to ml/m^2. The results fit the growth potential model almost perfectly.

Here is the data from my previous course.

And here is the data from my current course.

As you can see, the clipping yield data fits the growth potential data pretty good. There are no peaks in growth in the Spring and the Fall.

https://www.paceturf.org/PTRI/Documents/0401ref01.pdf

While the growth potential formula isn't perfect, it's pretty damn good and that's why I use it in my growth ratio model to help predict the standard growth rate for my specific climate. I have also used the many years of data and observations of growth rates and turf health to develop my turfgrass growth ratio tool.

I've been point blank told by turfgrass professors that my grass does not grow like the growth potential model. Based on the data below, you tell me.

So why do we keep seeing the generalized cool season turf growth model? I think it applies to areas without irrigation. If the summer is dry and irrigation isn't supplied, growth will drop. In climates where it gets very hot you will also see a decline in cool season growth rates. If you withhold fertilizer in the summer you will also see a decline. If you add large quantities of fertilizer in the spring and fall you will see large growth surges at those times. A lot of things can influence growth rates but if you can supply sufficient water and fertilizer, the clipping yield will mirror the temperature based growth potential model pretty closely.

The benefits of growing turf at the proper rate as illustrated with the growth potential model are vast. You will have good control of growth rates and less instances of low turf quality from excess clippings, disease and traffic wear. I've proven this for the past decade that I have been growing my grass like this where today I have never spent less on fertilizer, chemicals (fungicide/herbicide) and fuel to cut the grass.

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?

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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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