Posts

Joe Hollier wrote to me a few weeks ago asking if I could write something about MLSN for the STANZ newsletter. I sent this quick reply: Gosh, this is the kind of thing I should say no to because I’m quite busy and don’t want to add more things to do to my list.

Soil organic matter, and the total organic material measured by OM246 tests, are reported on a mass basis. That is, mass of organic matter per mass of soil. For convenience, this is usually reported as a percentage (%).

Two shows make their debut today. One is The ATC Doublecut with Micah Woods, in which I discuss topics from the blog. Giving those topics a doublecut, so to speak, by first writing about them and then discussing some of the background and related information for that topic.

This is a good one. Sand rootzones with low cation exchange capacity (CEC) don’t have a large amount of exchangeable potassium (K), for the simple reason that sands have a low CEC.

I’ve been making estimates of N mineralization from soil organic matter for the past few years using the method described by Gilmour and Mauromoustakos in Nitrogen mineralization from soil organic matter: a sequential model.

This can seem a bit abstract, the whole TurfGvX number. In this post, I go step-by-step through the reasoning behind this, and explain exactly which problem this solves. There’s a common question that people have when they start measuring the exact amount of clipping volume.

A question came up about optimum clipping volume and whether that quantity of clippings changes by season. That amount must change for any location at which there are seasonal changes in the weather.

Last year I wrote about manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) sod on highway medians in Thailand. I showed photos of a recently planted median, and explained why zoysia doesn’t persist in this environment when maintained without supplemental irrigation and regular mowing.

This is a philosophical one. I happened to look up the definition of inertia. I had thought it meant something like continuing doing what one has been doing, like a passive continuation of the route one is traveling once started on that route.

Turfgrass creates a lot of soil organic matter (SOM), also called humus, and the quantities of carbon (C) in that organic matter might surprise you. I made this chart to summarize the amount of C in the top 10 cm (4 inches) of a turfgrass rootzone.