"Tom Paul,
I think some of the resistance to light greens and browns on a golf course is the misconception that the grasses are dying."
Wayne:
Of course that's true but that kind of misconception can be easily explained. Well, maybe not easily but it can be explained and honestly. Just tell them that's just not necessarily the case--eg brownish grass is not dead--or not necessarily. Matter of fact, the truth is it CAN be almost the exact opposite---given a certain set of circumstances.
I'd like to be able to say it's just completely untrue but unfortunately that's not true either. This whole thing in the end when you're talking about browning in any way gets down to this entire issue of what "dormancy" is with various grasses under various conditions.
Do you know where I'm going with this---do you understand what I mean? This could be a good test for even the contributors on here (other than the supers on here).
It wasn't until about two months ago that I understood what this meant---this issue of dormancy. So I asked and asked, Scott Anderson, Scott May, Mike McNulty, Matt Shaeffer, my guy at GMGC and others. I think I understand it now and if not some of the supers on here will tell me if I don't and why I don't. But I think I do and this kind of thing can be easily explained to clubs, and it needs to be because hardly anyone has understood it from the membership side of clubs. Why would they---for the last fifty years the entire world of American golf agronomy has been massively over-irrigated and chemical dependent?
Is that condition really healthy grass? Not on your life. I call it the "Emergency Ward" and it is that. Super lush over-irrigated chemical dependent grass lives in a condition where it can't fend for itself in Nature very well, it has to be spoon feed practically every day.
The irony is when it lives in the "Emergency Ward" it's lush and deep green and most everyone thinks it looks great and looks healthy, just the opposite of what we as human beings look like in our Emergency Wards. We look terrible and we'll probably die if we aren't taken care of every minute.
Same with lush green grass, if it's not ministered to constantly even though it's lush and deep green it will check out almost immediately if tahen to brownish and it will be dead. It doesn't have a period of dormancy or if it does it's so short as to be virtually meaningless. I never knew that until recently---I never understood this issue of dormancy in agronomics. In my opinion---it's key, at least under some circumstances.
It's the exact opposite with grass that's been conditoned to fend for itself with far less irrigation and chemical. It can be light green far more easily and when it browns some it's in dormancy and can stay there far longer. Look at Donnie's Fishers Island---it can go all the way to total brown and stay there for weeks and weeks on end and when it finally gets rain it just snaps right back. Grass that lives in the Emergency Ward of over-irrigation and chemical dependancy can't do that--it'll just crap out and die almost immediately. But it takes time to make the transition from the Emergency Ward to healthy and tough. Probably 3-5 years minimum.
Clubs need to know that because it takes a committment. If they don't know that they may just shut off their water and chemicals and kill their course because their agronomy isn't ready--it's not there yet. It needs the time, it needs the club's committment to that time to let it transition. If we don't tell them the truth about all this they'll do it wrong and kill their courses and end up blaming us.
But when it gets there after a few years a whole lot of benefits result. It's just that so few American courses have gone through this process in modern times. But some are beginning to now---for the first time and the benefits are beginning to show, because they're now past that 3-5 year period and they made the transition correctly.