sand

The PACE Turf topdressing rate spreadsheets have been updated with a new default starting value for monthly maximum topdressing sand. US units spreadsheet Metric units spreadsheet You can use the spreadsheets to input the monthly average air temperatures at your location.

I watched a Greenkeeper App meeting about organic matter in spring of 2020. The video doesn’t seem to be available anymore. It has Doug Soldat, Bill Kreuser, and Roch Gaussoin talking about soil organic matter, rootzones, sand topdressing, and turf performance.

Does this sound about right? Matching sand topdressing to the growth of the grass works out pretty good when applying 1 cm3 of sand for every 1 cm3 of clipping volume.

Here are three reasons I think it is best to express sand topdressing applied to turfgrass as a depth. Depth of sand standardizes the amount applied, independent of the mass of the sand or the area over which the sand was spread.

Cale Bigelow asked me an important question last month. I’d suggested that measuring the total organic matter over time is a way “to simultaneously produce a putting surface with the desired characteristics while minimizing the amount of disruptive work done to the putting surface.

What’s the trick? It is measuring the soil organic matter in the green, over time, and then adjusting the maintenance work. The purpose of this is to simultaneously produce a putting surface with the desired characteristics while minimizing the amount of disruptive work done to the putting surface.

After grass is mown, the remaining aboveground plant material is called verdure. The Turfgrass Information File describes verdure as the “layer of green living plant tissue remaining above the soil following mowing.

I’ve been thinking about measuring organic matter and about the quantity of sand required as topdressing for any turfgrass surface. For samples taken near the turfgrass surface, I would like to measure the mass loss on ignition, and call that the total organic matter.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I’ve been thinking a lot about sand. I expect that sand is required for managing playability of sporting surfaces. I’ll writing in terms of golf course putting greens in this series of posts, but the principle applies to any turfgrass sports surface.

How much sand is required as topdressing? And how does one determine what that amount should be? The amount of sand necessary must be the amount required to optimize playing conditions for the most days out of the year, and simultaneously must be the amount required to manage the soil organic matter at the desired level.