Fusariummy

In my previous two posts I shared how changes to our mowing and rolling frequency resulted in better playing condition for half the price. This post will show how our growth rate contribute to that success and maybe will suggest one of the reasons I'm so obsessed with clipvol. It's the holy grail of turfgrass management. I initially measured clipvol to optimize our mowing frequency. I didn't want to cut greens if there wasn't any growth and I also didn't want to cut the greens and get too much grass. Over the years I have found that the ideal clipvol is about 20ml/m^2 per day. This is the figure I use in my Growth Ratio and is the target clipvol I aim for when I send out my mower. I can keep green speeds within our target easily with a clipvol within this range as can be seen in my previous post. What this means is that I want to get the exact same clipvol with every mowing. As I adjust the growth rates, the frequency of mowing will adjust to get this target clipvo...

In a previous post I showed how changes to our mowing and rolling frequency cut our equipment use costs on our greens in half. This post will discuss how those changes impacted our green speed. It's great to be able to cut costs but it also has to take the course conditions into account. My philosophy has always been that you need to keep conditions the same if you are cutting costs. This is, of course, unless you are facing a substantial financial crisis where some loss of playability is justified. Either way, if you have the option, try to keep conditions the same or better if improving efficiency. I consider myself lucky as our greens have some extreme slopes so our green speed is limited by topography not ego. We even skip rolling on a few greens to keep speeds lower because they become unplayable at speeds over 11'. Our daily target is 10 with a low of 9 and a high of 11. This is based off golfer feedback. The chart below shows the average green speeds per month per year....