There’s a short video about greenkeeper Mamoru Shoji and course maintenance at Kasumigaseki CC on YouTube. I especially like the view from the drone just after the 3 minute mark, showing the greens nestled among the carefully trimmed pine trees.
When I think about disturbance, I think primarily of verticutting and hollow-tine coring and sand topdressing and then brushing that sand in. Such an approach—one with disturbance—requires a faster growth rate too, and higher nutrient inputs, in order to recover from the disturbance.
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.
Perspective. It’s funny how that works.
When I first read this research report in 2011, I skimmed over some parts, and cherry-picked what I was looking for — that 15 to 20% surface area removal was required every year in order to keep soil organic matter under control.
There’s a new column on the Nichino Ryokka website. It’s a collaboration between ATC and Nichino Ryokka, with some selected content from the ATC site published in Japanese. The first column is here, and the topic is a 12 point checklist for dealing with creeping bentgrass heat stress (the original list is here).
A late July solid-tine spiking treatment of a creeping bentgrass green in Hokkaido, Japan. How’s this for a lede?
“Hollow-tine coring and solid-tine spiking practices may not alleviate creeping bentgrass summer decline.
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.
The MLSN guideline for phosphorus (P) is 21 ppm. I usually recommend enough P fertilizer to keep soil P, as measured by the Mehlich 3 extractant, from dropping below 21 ppm.
I completely forgot a few great articles when I put together this list of articles that are specifically not about turfgrass.
One of those I forgot is Evidence for the existence of three primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory.
As I say at the end of every year, it was another extraordinary year for studying grass around the world.
In 2018 I took 107 flights for a total distance of 314,748 km (195,575 miles).