BIGGA's Continue to Learn, Harrogate 2025

January 2025

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Optimising turf: Growth, organic matter, and nutrients

Turf GvX: growth versus expected

We had a short discussion about predicting the maximum quantity of clippings expected from a known quantity of N supplied to the grass. The Flipping things around blog post explains this. The calculation is simple.

First, divide the amount of N supplied by the N% of the leaves. See the PACE Turf update on Normal leaf nitrogen content for putting green grasses for current suggested values.

For example, let’s say we apply 1 g N/m2, and this is applied to creeping bentgrass with expected leaf N of 4.8%. The maximum quantity of clippings (dry mass) we could get from this is $\frac{1}{0.048} = 20.8$ g/m2. We expect 63 g of dried bentgrass clippings to have a fresh clipping volume of 1 L. Therefore, we can expect that our 1 g of added N can produce a maximum clipping volume of $\frac{20.8}{0.063} = 330$ mL/m2 of clipvol.

You can use the same math with a starting N rate in kg/ha. In that case, you’ll end up with clipping volume in units of L/ha, and you can divide by 10 to get the standard clipvol unit of L/1,000 m2 or mL/m2.

Sustainability in Golf: practical tips from around the world

Notes

For more about ATC’s soil testing services, and example reports, see our soil tests page.

See more about OM246 testing, including sampling instructions and a sample report, at the OM246 project page.

For even more information, see:

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