Love it or hate it, Early Order Program season has returned. Personally, l’m relieved to have survived another hot Nebraska summer. The last thing I want to think about is the plan for next year. Still, the discounts, rebates and rewards can be tough to pass up each fall.  In the past, most turf managers would fire up the calculator or MS Excel to start planning their 2024 program. GreenKeeper App offers an easier solution to this problem. The new EOP Planning Tool within Inventory Management duplicates applications and provides a report of product needs for next season. Review Past Progr ..read more

It’s the middle August and many turfgrass plants are feeling as tired as their turfgrass managers. The recent extreme heat is taxing cool-season grasses like ryegrass, bluegrasses and bentgrass while summer weeds like goosegrass, foxtail and crabgrass are thriving. Diseases like Pythium blight and root rot, summer patch, and Anthracnose can quickly get out of hand, especially if over-irrigated. Extra stress from normal cultivation like sand topdressing or even rolling can lead to over-night turf loss. It’s mid-August and we are all holding on for the ride into fall weather. Cool-season grasses ..read more

For years, golf course superintendents have asked the question to their greens mowing crew, “How much grass did you get today?” Common answers usually included “a lot” or “a little” or maybe more precisely how many times they needed to dump the mower buckets. But have you ever wondered how much would have been there if PGRs were not applied? Many golf course superintendents, and now even sports field managers, are quantifying growth rate. Clipping volume measurements are one of the most import metrics that I actively seek every morning. Are the greens growing too fast, too slow, or just right ..read more

We have been advocating daily measurement of growth rate on highly maintained turfgrass to improve management precision. Clipping volume measurements provide actionable data to help guide PGR applications and evaluate the efficiency of a fertilization program. But how much growth is required on a given day? Relating ClipVol to other turf performance metrics like turf quality and green speed can quickly answer that questions. Tracking a few different metrics from a couple greens each day can help add context to data points like clipping volume or water content. Soil moisture, green speed, and t ..read more

The team at GreenKeeper University is excited to announce that the course schedule and registration page for the 2023 academic season is now live! GreenKeeper University is a convenient online educational program that offers courses in the field of turfgrass science. Unlike one-hour conference sessions or brief webinars, GreenKeeper University courses dive deeper into the information over the course of three to twelve weeks. The professors will have time to explain advanced topics and students will be able to interact with other learners and the instructors. The content is mix of self-paced vi ..read more

It’s mid-August 2022 and many turfgrass managers feel as tired as their grasses. The sun is slower to rise, the shadows are starting to lengthen, and its more difficult for me to pop out of bed when my alarm clock sounds. The weather has been brutal across much of the US this summer. Drought in the west and Great Plains, excessive rainfall out east, and record breaking heat across much of the county have made for a tough July and early-August. While these conditions are hard on humans, they can be literally impossible for cool-season grasses. The saying “the dose makes the poison” can be appli ..read more

It’s been hot and humid, and many golf course putting greens are growing rapidly. Plant growth regulator programs that were dialed-in during May and June appear to be non-existent during July. Growth rate is surging, green speeds are declining, and puffy conditions are starting to plague golf course superintendents. So, has the grass become resistant to PGRs? Resistance to PGRs can be a real phenomenon. It occurs when a grass biotype that is more sensitive to a particular herbicide (a PGR in this case) than another biotype. The less sensitive biotype will then have a competitive advantage over ..read more

Spring can be a frustrating season for many in the golf industry. Golfers, Club Professionals, GMs, and owners want to escape the winter doldrums and return to their predestine golf courses with firm and fast conditions. Unfortunately, the weather doesn’t always cooperate. The spring of 2022 has been a tough one for many turf managers with numerous reports of winterkill. Below average temperatures this April have stifled recovery from basic cultivation practices and winter damage across much of the US. This puts the golf course superintendent in a tough position. How do they balance growth rat ..read more

There are more reports of turfgrass winterkill from around the US. At first, we thought most of the damage was limited to winter desiccation in the Central Great Plains. Unfortunately, we’ve received reports from coast to coast. Zac Reicher, PhD from Bayer Environmental Science and I hosted a live web-meeting to discuss techniques to recover from winterkill and enhance spring-seeding success. We highlight research we conducted together when we were both at the University of Nebraska after winterkill recovery in 2014. Topics include spring seeding, fertility, covers, and pest control to maximiz ..read more

Last spring, a handful of the research putting green plots at OJ Noer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were showing some pretty impressive signs of phosphorus deficiency. The OJ Noer research facility gives us the opportunity to push grass to its limits. About ten years ago, Bill and I demonstrated that ‘A4’ creeping bentgrass grown on a non-amended sand showed signs of phosphorus deficiency between 5 and 7 ppm Mehlich-3. The current University of Wisconsin guideline for “low” soil P is 25 ppm Mehlich-3, and the PACE Turf MLSN guideline is 21 ppm Mehlich-3 for phosphorus. Soil testing gu ..read more