Fusariummy

Most of our greens have slowly transitioned towards bentgrass dominated swards in the past few years In a recent post I discussed how the nutrient content of the soils was different depending on the depth and outlined some ideas of how we could use this to our advantage. We can keep poa super happy with more consistency (it's known to be temperamental and this is probably why) or we can use it to suppress poa while promoting other turf species like bentgrass or fescue. There are major differences in nutrient content at depth and it is useful to understand this but it is also cumbersome to test at various depths or tissue test every week like some might do. Instead, we can use our Supercharged fertilizer and clipvol records to help us understand how much nutrient we are removing from the turfgrass system and adjust our fertilizer applications to either under-fertilize or apply a sufficient amount of each nutrient to favor one turfgrass species over the other. We can estimate how mu...

I have had so much fun over the past 4 years learning more about how poa grows and how I can either make it better or worse to maintain quality putting surfaces while trying to promote bentgrass as much as I can. I am constantly told that it's impossible to grow anything other than poa in my climate but what I have found is that through careful record keeping and soil testing, we have the tools to keep poa angry for almost 12 months of the year. When I left my previous course the greens were predominantly creeping bentgrass and the grass grew almost exactly as expected. When I arrived at my current course the greens were mostly poa annua and I struggled to get the growth that I expected for the amount of nitrogen I was applying. The chart below shows the drastically low clipping yield that we experience during my first year at the new job. This was despite applying more nitrogen than I have in years. The previous superintendent warned me that these greens needed more phosphorus tha...

  I think it's important to always continue to evaluate what you think you know in golf maintenance. I'm about to take a pretty hard turn with this blog post. It's because the new bentgrass varieties that we now have are completely different than those old varieties. With these drastic improvements come new ways that we can incorporate them into our courses to begin to enjoy the benefits that improved varieties offer golf course playing surfaces and your budget. Bentgrass needs full sun . Bull shit. Some of the best establishment of bentgrass I have seen has been on my shady greens probably because the seedlings didn't dry out due to the shady conditions. Even under moderate to extreme shade it did just fine. Bentgrass doesn't like disruption. Not from what I've seen. Don't get me wrong, I totally love the disturbance theory but in order for the bentgrass seedlings to have a hope in hell of making it to a mature plant you need to make space. Ideally you ma...

Last fall I started a small overseeding study to see which turf type would be suitable for our fairways as " if you aren't overseeding improved turfgrass varieties you will invariably get unimproved turfgrass " like poa annua which requires more water, fertilizer and attention than we can give it. In the study I was testing 3 types of turfgrass. Perennial ryegrass, turf type tall fescue and creeping bentgrass. I couldn't test all the varieties of each species so I chose blends of the species which isn't important for the purpose of this post. All I wanted to see was how each species would establish with virtually no effort other than spreading the seed on the ground. I had plots on dry fairways, wet fairways, shady areas, sunny areas etc. The seeding rates were super low because the idea was to put improved varieties everywhere for a low cost and then let them spread out over time. The seed germinated in 10 days. Seed testing plots Around the same time I noticed s...

Coming onto a new property offers any superintendent a fresh perspective that is hard to have when you have been at the same property for along time. This is my experience anyway. This past year at my new course I have really noticed the differences in turf species composition and have thought a lot about why this may have occurred. The more I think about it the more my way of thinking about species composition and overseeding practice have changed. Let me explain. Poa likes high traffic areas more than other turf species, or does it? Take a look at the following picture of one of our greens from above. You can see the patch of yellow turf behind the green. This is disesased poa annua coming out of winter. There is a pretty uniform patch of poa behind this green on a slope that experience high traffic stress from mowers turning and golfers walking. There is no denying that this poa is here because of high traffic stress but is it here because it is a better suited turf species for this...

Last fall I came up with the idea of comparing actual growth to ideal growth to get a ratio of growth. I called this tool the turfgrass speedo . Ideal growth was calculated using the growth potential formula on my weather modeler spreadsheet and would use the ideal monthly nitrogen rate to determine how much grass should be harvested based on actual conditions not just a date on the calendar. The idea was to growth the grass at the right speed, not just as slow as possible. Growing the grass too slow is worse than growing it too fast. When you grow it too fast you get excess thatch and have to mow it more but when you grow it too slow it can't handle the traffic or stress of any kind really. I had made all sorts of observations about growth in the past and the model seemed good. This winter I started a new job at a new course and was excited to see how the model worked at a different course. For the first 5 months of the year the model was working perfectly. It suggested growth was...

We don’t have as much control as we think we do. — Sean Reehoorn (@spartangrass) October 17, 2018 It's totally true. This year I had big plans to control growth on my greens and boy did I fail. Despite having an intimate understanding of how fast each and every one of my greens was growing as well as how much fertilizer I had applied and how much growth I could expect from those applications, the growth rate this past May and August went completely off the rails. You'll also notice that the previous two years I was able to achieve relatively consistent growth, then it all fell apart. WTF! As you can see, the growth this past May and August was significantly higher than in previous years. This despite never applying less fertilizer to the greens. The total cost this year for those that are wondering came out to $275 for 1 acre of greens or about $0.07 per square meter. Dude! Like Sean says, "we don't have as much control as we think we do."  Although growth this su...