turf hacks

I made two new videos that you may like to watch. This one shows a circle mowing technique on bentgrass greens that accomplishes a ton of things all at once.

How would I think of soil water content if I did not have a soil moisture meter? I’d think of it in volumetric water content, the same as if I did have a soil moisture meter.

An easy way to relate inches of irrigation or inches of evapotranspiration (ET) to changes in volumetric soil water content (VWC)—that is something I could never figure out. I was thrilled to see the calculations shared by Bill Kreuser.

When the total organic material is known at time A and at time B, the accumulation rate can be calculated. By accounting for the sand that was applied between time A and time B, another accumulation rate can be calculated: the organic matter accumulation rate independent of sand application.

The Brede equation is essential to my work. I often use the stimpmeter to measure the ball roll distance (green speed) of putting greens. But there’s a problem. It can take a long time to find an area flat enough to make the measurement. On some greens, there is so much slope that one cannot make an official measurement.

Today I explained the same calculation about sand topdressing for the third time, so I need to write a blog post on this topic. This is following the method of David Robinson, who says when you’ve written the same code 3 times, write a function; when you’ve given the same advice 3 times, write a blog post; and when you’ve done the blog post 3 times, write a book.

Last November I saw a creeping bentgrass nursery in Japan. The nursery had been fumigated to kill seeds in the soil before the bentgrass seeds were planted. I was surprised to see, scattered across the nursery, plants with big leaves that clearly were not creeping bentgrass.

A few years ago Blake Meentemeyer and Brian Whitlark wrote about fertilizer in the Green Section Record. I’ve recommended this article before, and in that post I highlighted a case study from the article—a “facility in the Las Vegas area” reduced putting green fertilizer cost by a staggering 82%.

I had a great email exchange last December. It gets at what is really required, in a couple key areas, to produce high quality surfaces. And that might be less than you think.

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.