temperature

I often express the temperature-based growth potential (GP) as a number between 0 and 1. That is, I don’t multiply GP by 100 to express it as a percentage. One advantage of keeping the GP on the scale of 0 to 1 is easy multiplication.

Bentgrass grows more—or at least it produces more clippings for a while—when temperatures are higher than optimum for net photosynthesis. This means that you’ll typically see more clippings when the temperature is above the optimum for cool-season grass, even though the growth potential (GP) goes down at those high temperatures.

Last year I wrote about a soil temperature turfhack. The soil temperature is almost always between the day’s high and low temperature. The soil temperature at a 5 cm depth immediately after planting manilagrass stolons on 22 April.

I put the series of genki level (GL) blog posts together into this 17 page pamphlet. The pamphlet explains how one can calculate the genki level from the actual N supplied as fertilizer compared to a standard amount of N for any time duration.

Andrew McDaniel asked me if day length or temperature has a bigger effect on zoysiagrass going into or coming out of dormancy. I hadn’t really thought about that before. When I did think about it, I realized I pretty much only think of temperature, but I wondered if living in a tropical location where the grass doesn’t go dormant might be blinding me to something that happens where day length varies.

I made a note a couple months ago to make animated charts showing the cool-season (C3) and warm-season (C4) turfgrass growth potential over a 100+ year period for Tokyo. I was interested to see what those charts would look like.

I’ve been asked about zoysia suitability for California, particularly northern parts of California, many times. Every time, I give the same answer. In such a relatively cool climate, and in such a relatively sunny and dry climate, Cynodon seems like a much better choice.

I’ve been writing a monthly column for Golf Course Seminar (ゴルフ場セミナー) since May of 2008. The articles are usually 2 pages. I wrote a couple 4 page articles when マイカの時間 The BOOK was published last year.

It’s always a good idea to know what the soil temperature is. One can measure it, or one can be confident that the average daily soil temperature close to the surface (5 cm, or 2 inch depth) is higher than the daily low temperature, and lower than the daily high temperature.

A few years ago, someone contacted me about the use of zoysia in the Napa Valley. After describing places where he had seen zoysia—Austin, Tokyo—and been impressed with it, he asked what I thought about it in Napa.