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The Weight of Water

September 1, 2010

The message below comes to us from John Ausen, CGCS, at Hyperion Field Club. (Perhaps a more fitting name based on their weather would be Hyperion Boat and Yatch Club).

John's Message:

Hyperion Field Club received 39.5 inches of rain from June 2nd to August 14th. Many golf courses received more and for that I sympathize with you. Keeping the 39.5” of rain in mind, this means that 3.25 cubic feet of water landed on every square foot of turf. One cubic foot of water weighs 62.5 pounds which puts the weight of 3.25 cub foot at 203 pounds.

If you consider a 5000 square foot green the total weight of water landing on that green was 1.1 million pounds or 507 tons and it all hit at the speed and force of gravity which is somewhere between 10 and 20 miles per hour depending on the size of the drops.

Any more questions about the need for aerification!

John Ausen

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Trouble Spot at Des Moines Golf

July 13, 2009

 

This is an area on our #4 green south. Over the last 3 seasons we have seen the same symptoms in the same area each year. The area gets wilted very easily and the roots are dysfunctional. We thought it was take all patch. This is on a Penn A-4 green. This spring we treated the green with 2 applications of Heritage. It is not as bad as in prior years but it was showing up again in the hot weather.
 

 

 

We sent a sample off and it did test back as take all patch. Recommendation from the lab was to solid tine aerify, keep the nitrogen level up and to do multiple fungicide applications in the late fall and early spring. Also to incorporate Manganese sulfate in our spray next spring. It does look better this week.

Rick Tegtmeier

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2018 Turfgrass Field Day

September 14, 2018

The 2018 Turfgrass Field Day was held in conjunction with the Iowa Turfgrass Institute on September 11th 2018 at the Iowa State University Horticulture Research Station near Gilbert, IA. Perfect weather was present for the day, and this year marked Dr. Christians 40th Turfgrass Field Day. Almost 200 were in attendance for education, networking, and demonstrations from various vendors. Four education sections were offered including: golf course management, professional lawn care, sports turf management, and pesticide applicator training. Attendees were able to see the research being conducted at Iowa State University in the turfgrass program.

2018 Turfgrass Field Day opening remarks
Opening remarks for the 2018 Turfgrass Field Day.

Ben Pease presenting on his Ph.D. research on changes in turf when subjected to traffic
Ben Pease presenting to the sports turf crowd on how the turfgrass plant changes with traffic.

Adam Thoms presenting on topdressing for putting greens.
Adam Thoms discussing the putting green topdressing research at Iowa State.

Nick Christians and Isaac Mertz share the latest findings in Kentucky bluegrass variety trials.
Nick Christians and Isaac Mertz share the latest findings in Kentucky bluegrass variety trials.

Dr. Nair discusses herbicide damage to vegetables.
Dr. Ajay Nair discusses common herbicide damage on tomatoes and what to look for.

AJ Lindsey showing off a natural herbicide trial to the lawn care group.
AJ Lindsey showing off a natural herbicide trial to the lawn care managers group.

Robotic painters demonstrated how to use GPS to paint an athletic field.
Robotic painters, including the Turf Tank pictured above, demonstrated how they can paint athletic fields with simple GPS coordinates.

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AERATION AND ROOTING

September 7, 2012

Here are a couple of pictures from Eric Van Ginkel, who works for the Iowa Cubs.  He also works on several other sports fields in the Des Moines area.

This was a field that had highly compacted soil following construction.  They sodded it last fall with Kentucky bluegrass, but the sod had shallow roots and grew slowly because of the compaction.   This spring, they deep-tined the area with solid tines.  The area improved.  They recently used hollow tines on the deep-tine unit to pull cores.  These pictures show the rooting into the holes from the solid tines in the spring in cores that were removed this fall.

This is something that I have observed as well on area that have been deep-tined with solid tines.  It is amazing how much root growth can occur in these aerification holes.  We will need to do a follow up in the spring and see how much rooting there is into the holes left by the hollow tines.
 

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