USGA: Come on September! – August 2010

USGA: Come on September! – August 2010

Veteran Agronomist Dave Oatis raises a lot of good points in this article, but the one I would like to focus on most is trying to have the healthiest stand of turf possible heading in to the extreme weather season. Obviously, this is a pretty common sense approach, but how do you achieve this beyond your normal cultural practices?

A proven option to consider is our internal greens subsurface drainage process http://www.greensdrainage.com/ . XGD can help you out in these over the top summer conditions not only during the summer, but as a great aid to get you to the summer period. We have found, just like old fashioned farm field drainage, that an XGD green’s soil temperature will warm up two weeks faster than on other greens at your club, as we have removed the useless gravitational water that acts a conductor of cool temperature, keeping the soil temps cooler than they would otherwise be as the bathtub relentlessly stays full in the cool,wet spring season. This obviously promotes deeper healthier roots in the early part of the season setting the turf up to be as healthy as it can be going in to the summer season. Conversely, in the fall this greens soil will also stay warmer further in to the cool season allowing more deep root growth in the fall as well.

Some locales also experienced severe ice damage this spring as well. Once the ground is frozen our process cannot help you out, but going in to the freeze we maintain that we can keep the gravitational water at a minimum, and once the ground does thaw our process will begin working immediately. Another popular tool we are being asked to provide more and more is installing short XGD Risers in the low bowls of greens around 8″ from the turf surface. This allows supers to cut a cup hole above our XGD drainage laterals and help alleviate surface drainage issues before the ground completely freezes and our drainage system goes in to hibernation.

Later, Poor Old Dirt & Grass Farmer