Park Grass

Frank Rossi and Chris Tritabaugh had a short conversation about the fascinating Park Grass experiment, and about a lot more than that—fertilizer, bentgrass, dogma, salaries, budgets, detail work, GPS sprayers, and so on.

Have you heard about the Park Grass experiment? The one that started in 1856 with different fertilizer treatments applied to a hay meadow in England, with those fertilizer treatments applied year after year to see what happened to hay yields?

A friend gave me a beautiful card yesterday and wrote “perhaps you can use this Taraxacum officinale [dandelion] in some capacity.” I certainly can. Contining with the topic of my last post—cases in which low nutrient levels are desirable—the mention of dandelions reminds me of another case in which I’d adjust fertilizer recommendations.

Yesterday I saw that Erwan Le Cocq was interested in reading scientific articles and was welcoming recommendations. I remembered that I had put together this eclectic reference list to include in my Turfgrass Science and Greenkeeping book.

I was browsing the Sir John Bennet Lawes timeline and discovered this excellent video with plant ecologist Jonathan Storkey introducing the Park Grass Experiment. The Park Grass experiment at Rothamsted was started in 1856 and has been continuously monitored ever since.

Frank Rossi and I wrote this article about the Park Grass experiment. This experiment has been ongoing since 1856. It involves fertilizer treatments applied to grassland and the many measurements that have been made over the years on the experimental plots.