Fusariummy

  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...