bermudagrass

I made my first trip to Gainesville and the University of Florida last week when I visited the turfgrass field laboratory at Citra, then gave a seminar (recorded screencast here) on campus about my research.

This is usually where I show a map with all my flights, mention that they took me some hundred thousands of kilometers, and then share some of my favorite turf photos from all the places I went.

One of the things I’ve noticed when growing grasses in pots is the striking difference between aboveground stolons produced by bermudagrass, and underground rhizomes produced by zoysiagrass. These grasses were grown in pots and fertilized with N, P, and K.

I spent a morning with Brad Revill at Nikanti GC last month. I wanted to see the course, get some measurements, see the clipping volume measurement, and talk about turf management with Brad.

I was talking with a golf course designer recently, and he mentioned that “zoysia starts to look pretty attractive because of its lower water use.” That led to a long conversation about how incorrect that statement is.

This photo was taken 174 days after the ‘Tifeagle’ bermudagrass and ‘Wana’ manilagrass were planted as 3 cm diameter plugs on 1 October 2019. These particular pots have been fertilized with nitrogen only since then, with no P or K.

Yesterday I took a walk around a golf course in Chonburi, Thailand. It is three months into the dry season at this location; there has been negligible rainfall in Chonburi since the start of November.

I showed the appearance of two greens-type grasses—Tifeagle and a greens-type manilagrass—in this post. That post had photos of the grasses, 28 days after planting, when fertilized with N only, with N + P + K, and with N + P + K + dolomite.

I wondered what would happen if I added P and K and dolomite, or withheld those elements, from some turf I planted recently at ATC南店. Tifeagle 28 days after planting in coconut coir as 3 cm diameter plugs.

One of the most interesting articles I read last year was Drought responses of above-ground and below-ground characteristics in warm-season turfgrass by Zhang et al. That article describes the drought response after 3 weeks with irrigation withheld: