Fusariummy

In a previous post I outlined how I use sub irrigation classes to assign different crop coefficients (CC) to different parts of the golf course . This allows me to prioritize and micromanage the moisture depending on moisture demand. I also explained how I often have to make adjustments to these sub classes depending on the sun angle and the changing moisture demands for the time of the year. Even though we are big users of digital moisture meters we still mainly rely on our eyes to make adjustments to water. It's still too difficult to measure the entire golf course every day but your eyes can see moisture stress from a mile away. You can also notice areas that are too wet by how the grass feels under your feet. It's good to walk the course every day if you are the one make the adjustments to the irrigation central. When we notice that an area needs more water it is often when the soil VMC is well below where we want it. We are essentially at the wilt point and can see the moi

For the past 4 years I have had the luxury of using a central controller to control our irrigation system. In my travels and consumption of golf maintenance media, I have never read anything with any substance about strategies that superintendents use to program their central controllers. The literature that supports these software solutions are severely outdated and lacking and there are virtually no online tutorials to help managers improve how they use these powerful tools. This blog post will be my first attempt to share some of the ways I use my central controller to effectively irrigate my golf course. I currently have a RainBird Stratus 2 Central . Sure it looks like it was made in 1998 but it actually has some very powerful features that not a lot of people fully utilize. Flow Zones - These basically tell your computer how much water each sprinkler zone has access to. The advantage of using this system is that it makes it extremely easy to make quick programs for very specific

Understanding soil moisture math makes managing poa in extreme heat a lot easier. Temps were 42C when I took this pic last summer You would think having a digital moisture meter would make irrigating a golf course easier. For the most part I think it does but I have also seen some subtle ways that turf managers have started using moisture meters that I think actually make our lives more difficult. Before we could accurately measure the soil moisture we were left to essentially guess. We had to use our limited powers of observation to make judgement calls on how much moisture we needed to apply. We would irrigate at night, and top up any visibly dry areas with a hose. We would then have to go out again in the afternoon to top of the additional areas that had dried out over the day. The only real way to tell if something needed more water was to look and see if the grass was wilting.  It was more difficult to determine if we were over-watering. There's a big difference in the amount

In my two previous posts I talked about how one might want to fertilize and plan maintenance during these times of high uncertainty. It is my opinion that reacting strongly very quickly with the ability to reduce restrictions as time goes on and uncertainty decreases will be the best way forward for many facilities. Here I will discuss some hypothetical situations and things I have learned from years of irrigating golf courses by myself. Also, please allow me to venture into the hypothetical realm for a bit because it seems that most resources that I have read are very conservative and still in denial of what we might be facing here. I hope I'm wrong and that no one needs to use any of the things I'm about to describe. For many, they will possibly have almost no resources for the coming year and this could be made worse if this drags on for more than a few weeks or months. While most are currently concerned about getting the spring grass growth cut, what will happen when drough

Last week I decided to learn to code so that I could pull weather data off the internet and into my spreadsheets. This would allow my weather related models to update by themselves without me having to intervene. I have enough stuff to do than worry about updating weather data manually when computer can do it for me. After some trial and error I was able to pull past weather data and a 7 day forecast for any location on earth into my spreadsheet and analyze it to calculate evapotranspiration, growth potential and the dollar spot potential. The spreadsheet can be found on the following link; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WYICvWKBySCNHL6Q3G9Oqd3XGw3stvlLzzKucLRW0mo/edit?usp=sharing Follow the directions carefully and please, do not request to edit this file. Simply go to File -> Make a copy and you will have your very own version to edit. Further instructions are on the spreadsheet. Having this data at your fingertips makes decision making easier. You can see how much water

Some might call this overwatered, but the VMC is right where we want it and the greens are nice and firm. Watered by hand each morning during the heat. This week I quoted a tweet by the USGA and started a shit storm on twitter. Is there? https://t.co/rSV7Z8OxhW — Jason Haines (@PenderSuper) July 31, 2017 I love it when people get riled up about grass! The reasons I asked the question "is there a good reasons why sprinklers are running during your round" was that for the longest time I thought I needed to water in the afternoon to cool down the grass or to keep it alive to live another day. It turns out that this wasn't the case for me but it was taught in school that afternoon watering was an essential practice to provide good golf course playing surfaces. The article I posted was actually really good and took a good balanced approach at promoting what we do is not necessarily bad and outlining the very good reasons why you might see sprinklers running during the day on a

Does needle tine aeration make  wetting agents redundant? In 2015 I survived the record drought with only Dispatch as a wetting agent on my putting greens. I had changed the timing of my irrigation on greens with much success. I wrote about some changes I made to how I irrigated my greens in this post . Last spring I then hypothesized that maybe I could get by without the use of wetting agents on my greens . So me being me, of course I tried it out. And long story short, I used no wetting agents...almost. The almost part of that statement comes from the fact that I decided to hit up the 3 LDS I had on all my greens with a spot spray of wetting agent which I did. I used the rinsate from an old dispatch jug and sprayed it on these spots. The only LDS on my greens this past year Of course the assistant superintendent at the neighboring course, Matt, called me on my use of wetting agents (he bet me that I would have to use them) and won himself a case of beer (that is if I actually make it

Only Dispatch as a wetting agent? Yep I watered my greens differently in 2015. I shared my thoughts about watering greens first each night instead of last in a blog post in mid July. During that time I was having a lot of success with this watering regime and even though the record drought of 2015 continued for another month and a half I continued to have success. To recap, I decided to water my greens first thing each night with the thinking that this early water would give the plants what they needed sooner, allowing them time to recover from the daily stresses during the cool nights, and hopefully have no impact on the amount of disease I had on my greens. The old way of thinking always said that it would be best to water the greens last to minimize leaf wetness but my observations showed that the leaf was normally wet all night anyway due to dew and guttation. I recently outlined the successes I had in 2015 with reducing the cost and EIQ of pesticides on my golf course. This suc

Nice contrast I was always taught that the best time to water greens was right before the greens mowers went out. The theory was that this would reduce the time that the plant was wet and would therefore result in less disease. So from my start in the turf industry this is what I did. I am very focused on reducing my reliance on pesticides to control disease so whatever I can do to accomplish this goal, I try. I was inspired by a post by Dr. Micah Woods a few years ago questioning the deep and infrequent irrigation regime vs the light and frequent. He made a great case that light and frequent isn't necessarily an inferior way to water. The great thing about this way of thinking is that it left me knowing that my way of irrigating wasn't inferior. It also got me questioning a lot of things about irrigation that weren't necessarily true. This year while I was setting up our irrigation system I started to think about the timing of when I watered greens. I was thinking about t

A few years ago I noticed that what little bentgrass was still around on my greens was seeming to be taking back over . This got me thinking. Uh oh. At this time there was very little bentgrass left on my greens. They were almost 100% poa annua. I was in the process of making big changes to my management techniques. The use of a moisture meter allowed me to keep moisture levels controlled during the optimum growing season. I changed over to the MLSN fertility guidelines and my fertilizer rates were changed to be based on the temperature based Growth Potential. I changed the way I mow, cultivate and almost every other aspect of the putting green maintenance. I started using a moisture meter in 2008. All of a sudden I wasn't guessing on soil moisture levels. Although I wasn't precisely controlling moisture similar to how they do on Tour I was able to keep the greens significantly drier. Some people say that in my climate (West Coast of Canada) it is impossible to keep the greens