organic matter

What’s the trick? It is measuring the soil organic matter in the green, over time, and then adjusting the maintenance work. The purpose of this is to simultaneously produce a putting surface with the desired characteristics while minimizing the amount of disruptive work done to the putting surface.

After grass is mown, the remaining aboveground plant material is called verdure. The Turfgrass Information File describes verdure as the “layer of green living plant tissue remaining above the soil following mowing.

I’ve been thinking about measuring organic matter and about the quantity of sand required as topdressing for any turfgrass surface. For samples taken near the turfgrass surface, I would like to measure the mass loss on ignition, and call that the total organic matter.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I’ve been thinking a lot about sand. I expect that sand is required for managing playability of sporting surfaces. I’ll writing in terms of golf course putting greens in this series of posts, but the principle applies to any turfgrass sports surface.

How much sand is required as topdressing? And how does one determine what that amount should be? The amount of sand necessary must be the amount required to optimize playing conditions for the most days out of the year, and simultaneously must be the amount required to manage the soil organic matter at the desired level.

A correspondent wrote with a question about soil biology for controlling organics, adding compost tea to feed beneficial bacteria, and etc. There are two articles that I recommend as an introduction to this topic, both by David Zuberer.

I was honored to speak at the 40th Congress of the Asociación Española de Greenkeepers in Seville. Organic matter In the 2016 article “Managing Organic Matter in Putting Greens,” Adam Moeller and Todd Lowe wrote this:

Yesterday I spoke with a group of turfgrass managers in the Philippines at the Nutranta Turf Science in Action seminar. I talked about plant growth regulator (PGR) use in a tropical environment and what to expect when using PGRs—especially trinexapac-ethyl—in the Philippines.

Jason Haines has been sharing some ideas on his Turf Hacker blog, and one that I think is especially interesting is the idea that one can precisely match the topdressing sand quantity to the growth of the grass.

This question arrived recently to my inbox. I paraphrase: “Sir my greens are hard, the ball bounces and goes beyond the hole. Please give me recommendations on the steps taken to keep green soft.