Frost

Frost is basically frozen dew that crystallises on turfgrass leaves, making it brittle and hard. A single grass plant leaf consists of 90 percent water, therefore this also freezes when air temperatures fall below freezing (0 C).

Walking on frost covered turf causes the plant to break and cell walls to rupture. This in turn, decreases its ability to function normally. Damage to the plants crown can lead to turfgrass death and turfgrass thinning. Gaps left within the turfgrass sward at this time of year, can lead to a loss of canopy density. This in turn can lead Poa annua and weed ingress, leading to reduced quality surfaces both in the short and long term.

The visible signs of frost damage may not be seen instantly but generally after 48 to 72 hours, when leaves turn a pale brown. Frost damage can be greatly enhanced on putting surfaces due to their lower height of cut. All types of turfgrass are susceptible to frost damage and so are all playing surfaces, whether that be a soccer pitch, bowling green, golf course fairway or even a temporary green.

After prolonged periods of frost and increases in air temperature, turfgrass leaves may defrost, though the rootzone can remain frozen. To an untrained eye, playing surfaces may appear to be fit for play. This is probably one of the most dangerous times to walk and play on the surfaces. Root shear/break can occur when the turf is walked upon. The dragging action of foot traffic on the unfrozen tops of the surfaces, in conjunction with a frozen soil, can lead to snapping/damaging of the turfgrass roots. As a result, this can lead to severe turfgrass damage and even death, with a knock on effect of poor, thin and weak surfaces going forward.

Course protection measures during frosty periods should be high on any clubs agenda. Patience at this time of year, will ultimately lead to less winter damage, in conjunction with superior playing and agronomic conditions, for the main season ahead.

The Rough Stuff! : Links Rough Management.

Over the next month or so, the links team will be carrying out rough management practices in many areas of the golf course. Good links roughs provide excellent habitat for flora and fauna such as wild flowers, small mammals and encourages valuable nesting sites for certain birds.

Apart from the above factors, more open and thinner links rough have positive impacts from a playing perspective. Thick and tangled rough areas require constant maintenance, generally in the form of cutting, usually to please the golfer, who frequents these areas with wayward shots. Well managed open grassland roughs, from a playing point of view, enables better playability and easier location of stray golf balls. This ultimately results in faster play and less frustration, on that front.

Visually, well managed true links rough provides improved overall aesthetics, better definition and fantastic colour changes, throughout the seasons.

Continuing from the work carried out last autumn and this spring, the method of rough management this year will be cutting and collecting. This will lower the nutritional content in any of the more lush areas. Treatment with the graminicide Rescue, which will selectively kill any coarser grasses such as Perennial Ryegrass (Lollium sp.) and Yorkshire Fog (Holcus lanatus). After the treatment takes effect, the roughs will be pin harrowed or scarified to open up the grassland, thin it out and allow for natural regeneration of native grasses and wildflowers. If certain areas do become sparse and lack re growth is apparent, localised overseeding and topdressing will take place.

For the 2015 season, it has been agreed with the clubs ecological advisor that we create a 2 to 3 meter strip of fringing rough outside the semi rough cut line. In the past, these areas have been maintained as 4 inch rough, that required regular cutting with a semi rough type machine. In creating such, this band of rough will look tough to play out of, provide a challenge as the fescue grass will wrap around the club hozzle, but ball location will be relatively easy. It will also require less cutting, saving on man hours, machinery and fuel costs..... the best of both worlds really, that will hopefully lead to a lot less of the below, when growth is strong.

Enjoy the Links.

Question and Answers Session for the Atlantic Golf Superintendents Association Turf News

The Need to Seed.

The introduction of highly performing seed species and cultivars in this day and age is never a bad thing. As both membership expectations and environmental legislation continue to increase, playing surfaces need to be performing both well from a playing aspect but also meeting the desires of governmental/environmental expectations. In certain countries, tax is now paid on Nitrogen inputs, pesticides are being revoked and water is becoming a limited and expensive resource.

Dyna seeding of Fescue operation in action.

Overseeding is a practice that allows the turf manager an opportunity to counteract the above and produce superior playing surfaces that perform better, through longer periods of the year, despite a wide array of testing conditions often encountered.

Being based on a coastal links site, a mixture of both Chewing's and Slender Creeping Red Fescue are introduced to the playing surfaces regularly throughout the period of April until October. This operation is executed when conditions are ideal for germination, establishment and integration into the existing sward and rootzones. 

Seed cultivar selection is a relatively easy process. The final decision is based on what performs well on our site and also in conjunction with the Turfgrass Amenity seed ratings booklet. This literature provides the turf manager with information on how different species, varieties and cultivars perform overall, when rated on factors such as: Shoot density, visual merit, fineness of leaf, resistance to Red Thread and summer/winter greenness. Of course, it would be nearly impossible to rate these single cultivars in the field and such research is carried out in trial plots. Overall ratings are in conjunction with an average score based on the factors tested.

Marking out of trial plots, on site seed cultivar performance testing.

At the club, we have carried out some site specific research on an area of our turf nursery testing different blends and mixtures supplied to us by a major seed distributor. Although the trial is still relatively young, a few interesting observations have been made in our situation and certain mixtures are out performing others, which was initially envisaged. 

I like many others, believe that the more higher rated site specific cultivars are introduced, the better overall performance will be seen. At present, we are currently introducing 5 x Slender creeping red fescue (Festuca rubra trichophylla) varieties and 5 x Chewing's fescue (Festuca rubra commutata) varieties, which score very highly in the seed ratings booklet, into the putting surfaces.

So what factors are needed for successful seed germination?

•   Available moisture
•   Correct soil temperatures 
•   Oxygen

How do we encourage successful germination and establishment?

• Create the correct seedbed and rootzone conditions.
• Plant the seed at the correct depth.
• Encourage seed germination by providing adequate moisture.
• Relax aggressive maintenance operations until seedlings are established ie: grooming, verti cutting, heavy topdressing, lifting mowing heights.
• Providing light nutrition once new plants are apparent. Seaweed works fantastic from past experience.
• Manage and adopt practices to suit the desired species that we wish to establish into the sward. 

Visible results from fescue slit seeding operation.

Over the years I have seen various methods work well with regards to overseeding, they would be as follows: slit seeding, solid tine aeration with shorter tines, then drop seed in the desired species, matt in  and lately the Greentech Dyna seed units which create thousands of small pots for the seed to drop into.  After each operation surfaces are generally topdressed to protect the seed from the elements and to restore the surfaces.

Successful overseeding has many benefits and through a religious programme,  better surfaces will be produced both from a playing and agronomic aspect, day in day out. 

With regards to introducing and managing fescue in links greens: Truer, firmer surfaces are produced year round, with better ball roll and improved playing characteristics (Happy golfers), lower inputs of Nitrogen are needed (keeping costs down), likewise with chemical inputs (disease tolerance), less water (drought tolerance) and minimal surface disturbance (fescue prefers a settled environment). Fescue is also a very slow growing grass species (less mowing, less costs, less machine hours). If we add all these pieces to the jigsaw: growing fescue in a links situation is a very sustainable in the terms of cost, inputs and overall performance..... a win, win situation really!

 Fescue links putting surfaces, picture taken late February 2014.

More sand Honeyman! Why do we topdress?

Topdressing of turf is not a new thing to our industry, in fact early records dating back to 1875 show that,Old Tom Morris, Head Greenkeeper of The Old Course, St Andrews, Scotland was a keen advocate of this practice, of which he carried out back then to keep his greens firm and true.

It is common knowledge within our industry that Old Tom discovered this practice after a slight accident of spilling a wheelbarrow of sand onto a green, whilst replenishing a nearby bunker. After spreading around and brushing in of the sand, Old Tom quickly saw the benefits of superior looking turf, on the effected area, as apposed to the other areas which had no sand applied. After this important discovery, Old Tom regularly apparently often used the phrase "Moar Sand Honeyman!" ("Moar" being "more" in Old Tom's strong Scottish accent and Honeyman being his then Assistant, at the club).

As a practice, topdressing has many agronomic benefits to turfgrass, These being:

• To provide a true, smooth and firm playing surface.
• To increase putting green speeds. research shows optimum speeds will be seen around 8 days following topdressing (Nikolai, 2005).
• For the reduction and dilution of organic matter or thatch.
• The filling in of slight depressions and small hollows within the surface, leading to less scalping through mechanical practices.
• Provides turf crown protection in less than ideal environmental conditions.
• For the protection of newly planted grass seed. 
• Prevent grain by encouraging upright growth, in conjunction with other practices such as brushing, grooming and verti cutting. 

Turfgrass is a living system. Plants are constantly producing both living and dead leaf and root matter. Dead matter is broken down naturally by microbial activity. Within this process, a certain amount of plant available nitrogen is produced, which is then re available for turfgrass use (mineralization). It is only when the accumulation of organic matter is faster than natural decomposition, that problems occur. Higher levels of organic matter can cause rootzone characteristic and performance problems ie: soft/spongy surfaces, the proneness to more moisture retentive rootzones, poor playing characteristics and increased disease occurrence, just to name a few.
 
Regular topdressing in conjunction with sound cultural practices can lead to a reduction or maintaining a desired level of organic matter, providing us with the desired surfaces we enable to achieve in turf management. With the slow growing species that we look to manage and encourage in links management, tied in with the very low amounts of nutrients and water that we apply, organic matter levels are maintained around the 4 percent mark, through fortnightly light dustings of topdressing and without the need to aggressively hollow core or scarify the surfaces to control the build up of organic material. It is also important to note that yearly organic matter loss on ignition tests are carried out across 5 greens at the club, to constantly monitor progress and fine tune the topdressing programme even further, if need be.

References 

Nikolai T. 2005. The Superintendents Guide to controlling putting green speed. J Wiley and Sons Inc,  Hobeken, New Jersey, USA. 

Hydroject Aeration

Throughout the months of April to October our Hydroject will be seen aerating the putting surfaces on a 5 to 6 weekly basis. I feel this is ample in providing maximum effect from the operation but also in order to retain surface firmness, which is critical to the playing characteristics of links greens. Through regular topdressings down the years and growing grass types that produce little organic build up, layering is not a problem. I am also a firm believer that with desirable rootzone characteristics, fine turf species such as Fescue and Browntop Bentgrass will produce deep roots naturally in this type of environment, similar to what they do in untouched and unmanaged areas, such as rough grassland, semi roughs etc throughout links courses in general.

Through using this piece of equipment, we are able to use water from our irrigation system, which is then pushed into the machine, through a standard 1 inch diameter irrigation hosepipe. As the machine travels over the surfaces, high pressure water is injected to about 6 inches into the soil. After a few seconds the water dissipates and thousands of tiny open air channels are created, as the machine advances. 

Such channels allow soil decompaction, breaking of layers (if apparent) gas exchange and improved water infiltration. As a result of the operation, turfgrass roots will generally follow the channels deeper into the soil, creating healthy, vigorous turf, that is much better able to stand up to ongoing stresses such as mechanical and foot traffic. In conjunction with promoting deeper rooted turf from a species point of view, deeper rooting plants can withhold environmental stresses such as drought much better.

Research in the publication The Superintendents Guide to Putting green speed by Dr Thomas Nickolai refers to work carried out at Michigan State University carried out by Karcher et al (1996), proved that due to the rolling action of this machine, putting greens speeds were increased by up to 6 inches following hydroject treatments. In other trials carried out again at Michigan State University, Gibbs et al (2000), concluded that Hydroject aeration in conjunction with wetting agent applications led significant decreases in dry patch and also higher soil moisture contents.

Video link to Hydroject aerator in action: 

http://youtu.be/rC2HE837PSQ

References 

Gibbs, R.J, C Liu, M-H Yang and MP Wrightly. 2000. Effects of Rootzone composition and cultivation/aeration treatment on surface characteristics of golf greens under New Zealand conditions. Journal of Turfgrass Science (76): 37-52.

Karcher, D,E,  T,A Nikolai and P.E Rieke. 1996. The Hydroject. Not just an aerifier. Proceedings of the 66th Annual Michigan Turfgrass Conference. 25:119-121.

Nikolai T. 2005. The Superintendents Guide to controlling putting green speed. J Wiley and Sons Inc,  Hobeken, New Jersey, USA.