topdress

Measure exact topdressing effect, and requirement, by checking total organic material by depth.

A text asking “Have you ever read that?” arrived to my phone this morning, along with a screen shot of the the article in question. It’s an article by Todd Pippin with the title “The five-day program: Alternative philosophy for managing your topdressing program.

Layers in the rootzone are supposed to be bad. The images above and below look awful, don’t they? A layer like that could inhibit rooting, stop water flow, and all kinds of things.

Almost every turfgrass manager knows the current mowing height. Most turfgrass managers know the annual nitrogen (N) fertilizer rate. When it comes to sand topdressing rates, some turfgrass managers have that number.

I used three sets of slides at this conference. You can download them at these links. MLSN: modern turfgrass nutrition Clipping volume, GP, and nitrogen OM246, organic matter/material, & sand topdressing See more about OM246 testing, including sampling instructions and a sample report, at the OM246 project page.

There are a lot of reasons to apply just the right amount of sand topdressing. Too much is no good, and too little is a problem too. The starting point with figuring out the right amount of sand to apply to your turfgrass is to know exactly how much you’ve been applying.

This note below, about the temperature-based turfgrass growth potential (GP), has been sitting in my blog_posts.org1 file for a while now, as one of those topics to write about sometime. When I read the note I jotted down when I created this entry, I realized I wouldn’t have to do much to turn this into a blog post.

This photo of the 18th green at Habu Country Club in March 2001 appeared in my Facebook feed on March 20, and it reminded me of springtime maintenance on golf courses in Japan.

One of the things I’ve started looking at when doing OM246 reports is the combined OM in the top 6 cm (2.4 inches) of the rootzone. This shows the big picture of total organic material change at the surface of the rootzone.

One of the many valuable things I utilize from OM246 testing is what I call the organic matter accumulation rate. I’m actually referring to the net accumulation rate—how the total organic material in the rootzone would change if no topdressing had been applied.