Mowing

Many podcasts go on for hours. Mine often do. But this one is only 20 minutes, and for information density—a lot of useful insight in a short time—this particular episode is hard to beat.

I’ve thought of mowing patterns or “stripes” as something that happens with grasses. I’ve seen it on lawns, sports turf, golf courses, and hay fields. When the grass is cut, and as the leaf blades are bent in a particular direction during the cutting process, often by a roller that is part of the cutting unit—the grass blades get oriented more in one direction than in another.

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.

You won’t find these at every golf course in Japan, but it is common to see a green condition (グリーンコンディション) information board prominently displayed at the clubhouse. The Facebook page for Monthly Golf Management magazine (月刊ゴルフマネジメント) shared a beautiful photo gallery with representative examples of these green condition boards.

I’ve written about getting around the golf course on a sulky, but an even more common method of transport is the kei truck. It’s convenient to use kei trucks. A kei truck easily transports two people and two walking mowers, plus clipping volume buckets and other accessories, like the ramps that are used to roll the mowers into the bed of the truck.

Bill Kreuser shared a fascinating update from one of the experiments he is conducting this summer. I wouldn’t have expected to see such a big difference in growth rate with a mowing height difference of 0.

Last week I had a couple conversations about green speed. Green speed and surface hardness My column in the June 2018 issue of Golf Course Seminar magazine discusses the relationship between effective mowing height and green speed.

Yesterday I responded to two questions related to carbon emissions associated with electricity generation. This was part of a broader discussion started by Jason Haines about small electric autonomous mowers.

Jason Haines has written recently about The future of robot mowers today and I recommend having a read of that post for more insight, and some videos of these types of machines.

A full year of putting green clipping volume measurements looks like this. Well, it’s like that with a number of caveats. This is what it looked like: at this location 21° N latitude with seashore paspalum turf managed the way it was with the weather of the past year growing in the soil conditions of this site irrigated with this water etc.