ultra dwarf bermudas help

[John_D._Bernhardt]

The usga and most U of florida etc studies do not reccomend doing a serious dethatching early in the spring to get the grass healthy coming into the growing season. Our super thinks this is the only way to get control of the grass. this is becoming an issue as these grasses which are great putting surfaces gain age and are a study in progress. I am in agreemetn particularly where the super did not verticut like he should the first few years.

[Mike_Young]

Your super could be right.  I know from experience with TifEagle that where I have used it they vertigroom it at least every other day and verti-cut it twice a month.  The other issue that in some cases makes it unsuitalbe for a lower budget course is that you must maintain at a constant low height .125 or or close.  If not it can thatch on you and becomes very hard to maintain and cut smoothly.  We have also found that due to the consistency of the grass we do better painting the greens instead of overseeding.  The overseeding seems to germinate in the vert-groom slots and seems harder to rid in the Spring.  But a super putting surface.
Mike

[Rick Shefchik]

Man, I was sure this was a thread about really, really short golf shorts, and I was trying to figure out from the subject line how they could possibly improve my game. Boy, am I relieved!

[cary lichtenstein]

Diff eaagle is a vastly overrated grass. We have it and it gets either too fast or too slow as a putting surface. Our superindent cannot get a constant speed, it turns brown if cut too low, the moorers scalp areas where there are ridges, it is out of play for plugging 3 times per year.

We have a number of 2 level greens and you can nt stop the ball going downhill. Like Augusta. Makes our old pine placements unfair.

[jg7236]

Good stuff Rick, I can't stop laughing.

[ash]

while some may not be sure of the merits of tifeagle, I  can assure you it is a superior putting surface. I have built various greens with various turfs and have never achieved such soft, true, and fast greens so quickly. I believe below lake okeechobee in florida, the eagle soars above all. My public greens are consistently true. Not everyone is up to the challenge, but they are faster(11's and better) when maintained properly. This, I should state, is not an overseeded putting surface and cannot comment on overseeded eagle as I have not played or groomed it

[Don_Mahaffey]

John,
My experience with ultra dwarfs is, it is very important to manage the thatch and keep the grass lean. My personal experience is you can grow good ultra dwarfs with less Nitrogen then some of the PhD's recommend. What I also learned was it's better to do less frequent, but more aggresive, verticutting then you might do with dwarf or tifgreen. Now, that's from experience in the dryer southwest, not your  wetter, more humid region. What I also learned was, it was better to error on the side of thinning out the grass then to let it get thatchy. I can't say an aggresive dethatching in the spring would be a bad idea as long as the grass is activly growing and your sure the cold weather is behind you.
If you ever get to NW Texas, give me a call 806 672-7449.
Best of luck, Don

[S. Reid]

"The warm season bent-grass of the South".

John,

I've helped manage "Champion" Bermudagrass for the last 3 years in South-Central Texas. Let me just get this off my chest first,
"What a pain in the ass".

Ok, I feel better.

The ultra-dwarf's are difficult and require the utmost attention. They're a stoliniferous turfgrass, meaning they do not have a deep rootzone, eventhough I have found some roots at 5-7 inches. They are definitely not heat/drought tolerant. At 95 degrees, these boyz can turn at the drop of a dime and make your butt tighter than Dick's hatband.

They do require low mowing but disease pressure (bermudagrass decline + another one that I cant remember the name off the top of my head, but is a strain of the previously mentioned) WILL kick in if your shaving them at a 1/10 to 1/8. The problem with the low mowing definitely rears its ugly face when the scalping starts. This comes from the "puffiness" or thatch build up over the growing season. Sure your going to be verticutting, spiking, aerifing, and all that good stuff, but what I'm fixen to tell you will hurt. Get the biggest damn tines on that aerifier you can put on, and start punching the heck out of them boyz. Next year were going to 5/8" tines and tearing some ___ up. The reason: we want to take out as much biomass out of the greens as possible. Yes, the membership had a coronary when hearing that, but there are increased benefits; less thatch, better incorporation of topdressing into the holes, and taking out more surface area of old leaf tissue and initiating new growth. We have even had to get a new aerifier (Aercore 1500 John Deere) to be able to get a better aerification. Actually, we have had to buy alot more equipment for these silly boyz.

So to answer your question somewhat, because I don't know your location, Yes start taking it out as soon as possible. This is dependent upon soil temperature-time of year. I'm located in Bryan-College Station, 90 or so mile north-west of Houston. We will wait until after Easter for sure to start aerifing because of the time frame of "freek" freezes. So around the end of April soil and dirt start flying! Just to add a quick note, we did put 3/4 inch tines on our nursery green when testing the new machine, and damn It looked better than catfish and budweiser on a Saturday night. We saw a much quicker responce of new growth and this was done the 1st of October, go figure! I don't think we'll ever use the 3/4 tines though due to something called "hanging". So overall it depends on your location because your course is its own environment and I couldn't compare yours to mine.

Don did make one of the most important comments though. It definitely comes down to fertility. You have to lean-the-green with the nutrients. We do not fertilize the overseed whats-soever. This reduces the big "flash" of growth in the spring coming out of, well what we call semi-dormancy. We control the feeding during this time so we dont get an over zelous jump in growth which contributes to the puffiness factor. Side note, our overseeding rate was 6lbs / 1000ft. Reason; we dont want to fight the poa trivialis in the spring-summer time. We just want coverage.

Overall, any smart agronomist would not tell you what exactly to do over the internet. I don't know what your course micro-macro environment is. What kind of greens, airflow, shade, water, etc. is. We are going in this direction because we have gone thru this learning curve with the ultradwarf and we are getting closer each year. I will say though, that we are seeing a definite decline of turfgrass quality each subsequent year.

Finally, I would say to get behind your super. He's the one fighting this battle, and it does take time because simply put, I don't believe the research came out in a timely basis in which it should have! The super's are the ones doing it as is, and in the field. Remember, one cure does not fit all.

SR.

[Jimbo]

I have some pictures saved on my computer which paint the picture Steven Reid is describing explicitly.  I agree with everything he says.  

Can someone tell me how to post these pictures, or can someone do it for me if I email them?

[Andy Hodson]

Steve
I'm just down the road from you...we have Champion, also. So what's the answer if Champion isn't? Or is it? Is it workable? Or is it just too big of a pain in the ass...rip it up and put something else down. It seems touchier than a woman.

John
You have played here. Are you experiencing some of the same problems?

[Mike_Young]

Don't consider the case with Champions as the case for all ultra-dwarfs.  Remember Champions was found as a mutation.  Tifeagle was developed.  I have used both and I think there is a big difference.
Mike

[S. Reid]

Hope you gentlemen had a good turkey-day!

Andy,

First, I don't believe "champion" is at the point of ripping it up. The learning-curve is still being established. When the warm-season-supers went from good ole tifdwarf to the super dwarfs alot of the standard practices were still being used. What happened though, was that the build-up of the biomass-thatch layer kicked in like all get out and all the sudden you saw severe scalping and the dogs starting barking. And, like I said in my original post, one cure does not fit all. Every course has its own curve to establish. Whispering Pines compared to Champions compared Bentwater, well there all different environments as well as designs. Whispering Pines has some really severe slopes on the greens and we saw some really thin, scalped areas, even with the JD flex mowers. But further questions develop, are there greens uniform in their depths (12-14 inches of seedbed mix). Do these slopes or tiers have 16 inches and its really a cause of localized dry spots, maybe. I have ideas, but I'm not there everyday to look at them.

As for the ultra's in general, well Mike I'm hearing the same things even about tifeagle. Decreased vigor, thatch, scalping etc. As for your practices, you may have been quite a bit more aggressive right off the bat than others and produced some really quality greens, hats off to ya man. You must know how hard it is to be a super in the day of the "STIMPMETER". I think it's imperative that you share your mangement techniques with others who may be having problems.

And yes they are different. "Champions" came from Huntsville, Texas. Not the prison, (I have actually felt I was in prison at times, especially 3-4 weeks after aerifying and putting down I don't know how many tons of top dressing to fill them in), but from Elkins Lake CC. It was a mutation from a dwarf green, but when you look at both grasses which one took the most gamma-rays to produce?

As for the ultras's overall, well I've heard some positive remarks about mini-verde, but dont have enough information to come to a conclusion. The Floradwarf at Windrose in Spring, Texas look damn good the last time I played, and had to be the fastest at that. I think what it comes down to it, its the micro-environment and how aggressive the cultivation practices are. One thing for sure, there always the best right before their "punched".

As for bermuda greens in general, I still Like tifdwarf. Heres my recipe. Groomers 2 times a week, light topdressing bi-weekly, spoon feed nutrients, and occasional verticutting with the standard aerification. Had some boys from Dallas thinking they were on bentgrass. Researchers from the universities are also talking alot about tifdwarf again, because you can keep them fast too, even at 3/16. I guess its hard finding a good stand though, and also the whole idea of mutations. Well, I just got back from a course I helped build in 92 located in noth-east Texas and if I saw any so-called mutations they were quite small.

If you were to ask me what I was going to use or wanted, well, I 've got a couple of projects in Texas at this time  and were using tifdwarf. You just cant beat it! until something really comes along that puts it to bed.

Have a good one boyz,

SR.