Using indicator species to fine tune fertilizer applications
I get it. I talk a lot about turf disease and fertilizer but it is only because I think that the two things are closely related. More specifically, I think the amount and types of diseases on our grass...
View ArticleGrowth Rate and Plant Health Hypothetically speaking....
Place looks better in late June that it did in May. Gotta love Junuary! In my last post I wondered if I could use indicator species to help me grow my grass at the right rate. This is only a...
View ArticleSand-O-Meter
This year I changed my approach to topdressing on my greens. I decided to use clipping volume to determine how much and when I would topdress the greens. The idea is that I will apply sand as the...
View ArticleLets try this organic thing again
When I told a local superintendent my intentions to try Civitas on my greens again he threatened to kick me in the nuts. Here's why and please note that this post does not contain any paid promotions...
View ArticleOut of Control Growth
We don’t have as much control as we think we do. — Sean Reehoorn (@spartangrass) October 17, 2018 It's totally true. This year I had big plans to control growth on my greens and boy did I fail....
View ArticleThe Future of Robot Mowers Today
In my travels I am very fortunate to be able to sit in on other people's presentations. While in Denmark last month I was able to sit in on a presentation by William Boogaarts who works for de Enk...
View ArticleMore Crazy Robot Mower Ideas
Recent discussions on twitter have drummed up a lot of interesting ideas about robots and a lot of hate too! I love it! For the haters or skeptics think about robot mowers like this. Do you have an...
View ArticleMore Crazy Robot Mower Ideas
Recent discussions on twitter have drummed up a lot of interesting ideas about robots and a lot of hate too! I love it! For the haters or skeptics think about robot mowers like this. Do you have an...
View ArticleAddressing Climate Change in Golf
One of my favorite things to do is a SWOT analysis. It's where you look inward and outward to address the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that you or your organization face. I do this...
View ArticleTurfgrass Speedo
How fast should we grow our grass? It's a question I have been asking on this blog for almost 7 years now and every year I think I get a bit better. I explained this evolution last year in a blog post...
View Article1 Week Impression of the Husqvarna Automower 450x on a Golf Course Fairway
Last week we (fellow superintendent) got the first automower in Western Canada to be used on a golf course (from what we can tell). I've talked a lot about robot mowers recently and how they could...
View ArticleTurfgrass Speedo is Better Than I Thought
Last fall I came up with the idea of comparing actual growth to ideal growth to get a ratio of growth. I called this tool the turfgrass speedo. Ideal growth was calculated using the growth potential...
View ArticleI used to think about overseeding all wrong.
Coming onto a new property offers any superintendent a fresh perspective that is hard to have when you have been at the same property for along time. This is my experience anyway. This past year at my...
View Article#Covid19 Agronomy Update.
Last Friday (March 13) I was thinking that removing our bunker rakes and ball washers was a bit extreme. On Monday my crew and I had a brainstorming session and came up with the idea of raising cups...
View ArticleGolf Course Fertilization During an Epidemic
Stacking PGRs can help slow growth where it is no longer needed Over the years I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about growth rates and fertilizer. Through various techniques such as the MLSN...
View ArticlePredicting the Future on the Golf Course During an Epidemic
While browsing social media it is apparent that there are many different approaches being taken to manage courses during the #Covid-19 outbreak. I have also received many questions from other...
View ArticleGolf Course Irrigation During a Epidemic
In my two previous posts I talked about how one might want to fertilize and plan maintenance during these times of high uncertainty. It is my opinion that reacting strongly very quickly with the...
View ArticleTurfenomics: Productivity Part 1, Productivity Starts With You
Productivity starts with you. Productivity is loosely defined as how much work you can do in a given amount of time. It's a measure of efficiency. For mowing we measure this in ha/hr (in all but 2...
View ArticleTurfenomics: Productivity Part 2 Bottlenecks and Deadlines
Project management 101 is all about the bottleneck. A bottleneck is "one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. The result of having a...
View ArticleTurfenomics: Productivity Part 3 Brute Force and the Opportunity Algorithm
In the first part of this series I talked about how I don't like to spend more than 60% of my labor resources on scheduled maintenance practices like mowing, rolling and raking. I find that if I spend...
View ArticleAccidental Microdose Overseeding
Last fall I started a small overseeding study to see which turf type would be suitable for our fairways as "if you aren't overseeding improved turfgrass varieties you will invariably get unimproved...
View ArticleGenki vs Growth Ratio is a game changer
Smokey skies and high growth rates go hand in hand for some reason.I've experimented with how to best visualize growth rate data in a way that helps me make informed decisions about how much fertilizer...
View ArticleHow to find success with overseeding new bentgrass varieties.
I think it's important to always continue to evaluate what you think you know in golf maintenance. I'm about to take a pretty hard turn with this blog post. It's because the new bentgrass varieties...
View ArticleGenki 3 Way
A few posts back I talked about how I found it useful to compare a 30 day running average growth ratio to a 30 day running average nitrogen genki. This would tell me how my grass was growing and how...
View ArticleTurfenomics: Productivity Part 4 Mower Efficiency and How to Cut Your Cost of...
How much grass can your mower cut? The most basic way of calculating this is to take the width of the mower and multiply it by the speed. Let's say our mower is 2 meters wide and can mow at 10 km/h...
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