For the super's....eradication of common bermuda

[Jason Walker]

Back in the 1950's and 60's the USGA recommended to golf courses in the 'transition zone' many different approaches to consistently growing grass year-round.  One of these suggestions was planting common bermuda--even as far north as New Jersey.  Well, as you can imagine, this approach, despite evidence of it being implemented at such places as Pine Valley, didn't exactly work out.  Most courses that experimented with common bermuda eventually gave up and went back to more common grasses found in the Northeast--bent, fescues, etc.

My course in Southern New Jersey was one of these clubs that planted common bermuda in the 60's.  In 2006 the golf course underwent a complete restoration that included gassing and then regrassing of all tees, fairways, greens, and roughs.  In 2010, during the extreme heat of the summer time, small spots of common bermuda began showing up--specifically in the middle of several fairways and on several banks of bunkers.

At first it wasn't seen as much of a problem, but after the summer we had in 2011 with 4-5 straight days near 100 degrees, with high humidity, the bermuda began proliferating.  Earlier in the year our superintendent tried several methods of eradication, none of which seemed to do the trick after this summer.  The most severe method was cutting out the areas of bermuda in the fairway down about six inches, applying 4x the recommended dosage of Basamid, covering the area for a week, and then resodding.  With six weeks--at about the height of the summer heat-- small sprigs of bermuda began to reappear.  I'm not sure a nuclear winter is going to kill this stuff.

So all of that being said, has anyone run into this problem???  Obviously we hope a very harsh winter will do some of the job for us, but assuming we're in a weather pattern that will bring another hot and humid summer to New Jersey, we're really looking for any tricks folks may know or have heard about.

Thanks!

[Tom_Doak]

Here is a heresy:  Common bermuda was a great grass for golf courses.  It's the poa annua of the south!  You can't kill it, you can mow it tight or let it go [more so than poa annua], you barely have to irrigate it at all. 

So, naturally, it's considered a weed and a huge problem in the golf business.

[Jason Walker]

for four months of the year up here it causes no problems at all.  In the spring and fall up here it looks and plays like crap.

[Ed Brzezowski]

agreed it's a problem on some philly courses

[archie_struthers]

 

Interesting you bring this up,  we were just discussing how awful the stuff is the other day. We have seen it proliferate this summer and fall also. At the shore we have less chances of a real hard freeze so it's scary thinking about it . They experimented with Zoysia at Pine Valley when Eb Steiniger was  the superintendent and it took years to expunge it . It was particularly aggressive on the 11th green surrounds and the fairway bunker.  I'll reach out to Rick Christian. Maybe Pat Gertner will see this and chime in! Zoysia has some real similarities and perhaps  there's a clue here. It's really a noxious weed and I'm looking forward to hearing if there is a good way to eradicate it.

[Tim Bert]

You don't have to be a super to weigh in on the intrusive nature of bermuda.  Just come on down South, buy any piece of property, and try to grow any kind of lawn that isn't bermuda.  You'll get all the education you need!

[Ed Brzezowski]

roundup???  it's nasty on courses i have seen. It should be nuked up here.

[Bill_McBride]

Here is a heresy:  Common bermuda was a great grass for golf courses.  It's the poa annua of the south!  You can't kill it, you can mow it tight or let it go [more so than poa annua], you barely have to irrigate it at all. 

So, naturally, it's considered a weed and a huge problem in the golf business.

Down here on the Gulf Coast, it's a terrific playing surface when dormant in the winter.    Almost links like, lots of putters from off the greens.  

[Randy Thompson]

You can kill it with round up but itīs tricky. Best results will occur when it young and the new shoots are coming out. You need to have warm temperatures to have the round up translocated. If you are familar with bermuda and you pull up a large piece you find many individual plants all connected to one main white thick root. I will expalin in laymen terms why so many will tell you that, we tried round up and it didnīt work, we got initial kill and it came back. It gets absorbed by green tissue, and enter in to the plant at a certain concentration, it begins to translocate and the first plant takes up a certain amount of the chemical, the chemical moves on but at a lesser concentration and arrives to the next plant and that plant takes what it needs and the concentration is further reduced and this continues until the concentration drops so much that it becomes ineffective. In theory, all the plants should have the chemical on them above the surface and therefore all should be sending to the below stolens and rhizomes but one spraying wonīt get them all or the concentration will not be enough to kill what is happening below the sioil. Killing on top is easy. So what we have done with sucsess is to follow up with s second application 24-48 hours after. Round up usually takes seven days to turn brown so the second application will still be absorbed and translocated. If you want to over do it, spray a third time but we never have and never had to and we have had excellent results. Keep in mind that you will kill everything else but you can reseed a couple of days after the last treatment.

[Steve Lang]

   only huge problem with bermuda in se tx is when folks (like pga) try to make things look green with overseeding in fall/winter period for a spring tourney.. the transition periods were bad and not worth it one bit..

 

[Matt Day]

kikuyu makes bermuda look like play time.

would a selective herbicides used to contol bermuda in bentgrass like siduron work ?

[Randy Thompson]

Matt,
I was thinking the same thing about Kikyu, from what I understand there are millions of seeds left behind and they have not come up with a pre-emergent that works on the seed.

[Matt Day]

Randy
we have areas where the kikuyu has literally smothered the bermudagrass underneath. We did one hole with a field top maker to control in our rough what we call in Australia "parramatta grass" (Sporobulus indicus) which is a clumpy south african mother that fears nothing. By taking about six inchers of the surface away we not only took the parramatta grass but the kikuyu that it was growing in. What grew back was bermudagrass with very little kikuyu, which could have been that we got a lot of that seed bank as well?

pretty radical solution, expensive and not welcomed by the public 

[Randy Thompson]

Matt,
Here in Chile we are definetly in the transition zone and I would say Kikyu is the biggest problem. I got a new one now on the coast called salt grass that is trying to give the kikyu a run for its money for the number one spot but its only on the coast and when mowed tight itīs not bad for a rustic rough, the problem is in the bunkers, we have used soil sterilants without results. The roundup seems to be giving better result but the micro climate cool temps and few sunny days seem to inhibit the translocation.

[Matt Day]

Matt,
Here in Chile we are definetly in the transition zone and I would say Kikyu is the biggest problem. I got a new one now on the coast called salt grass that is trying to give the kikyu a run for its money for the number one spot but its only on the coast and when mowed tight itīs not bad for a rustic rough, the problem is in the bunkers, we have used soil sterilants without results. The roundup seems to be giving better result but the micro climate cool temps and few sunny days seem to inhibit the translocation.

this has been used with a lot of success for kikuyu control in other grasses, wont solve the seed issue

http://www.nuturf.com.au/product%20segments/sherwin/Drive%20Herbicide.pdf

[Anthony_Nysse]

We are exploring these options now, as the golf course was renovated in 2005 and the fairways were regrassed to sh*tsport, I mean, TIFSPORT-I'm not sure that there is a worst combination of 2 grasses. The roughs remained common bermudagrass.  I will post some pictures later today, but the eradication usuallly consists multiple applications of Round/Fusilade and that usually does not ensure a 100% kill. I know Superintendents that have made 4-5 applications and still seen grow back.

[Randy Thompson]

Anthony,
What are your dissatifactions? We used tiff sport once in Argentina and there seems to be an increase in the tendency to produce spring dead spot. What percentage of round up were used or have your heard of people trying. Just curious and would appreciate if you go into more detail where is the problem. For example are you having problems with the common returing in the fairways?

[Anthony_Nysse]

Randy,
  The tifsport does not hold up to any amount of cart traffic. I believe that it really does best at .400" or lower, not our winter height of .600"+. The tifsport does not like to be heavy verticut, nor does it really recover quickly after aerification. It also seems to be more suseptable to any sort of herbicide injury.
  The fairways here were Methyl Bromide back in 2005 and regrassed. The exsisting common bermudagrass rough was not replaced, there for the edges are mostly common along with numerous areas where the common was pulled onto the fairwyas from any aerification/verticutting. The common runners are much easier to control int he summer because of the constant grooming/verticuttuing and low mowing height. Other than Celebration, I've never seen any grass as aggressive and a constant pain like common.
  We sprayed our DR tee, but then resodded it, but we sprayed Round Up at 45oz/acre and Fusilade at 8-10oz/acre. (off the top of my head). I know a course that did 2 apps, removed the common and 3" of soil, resodded and did it all over this summer as it came back using similar rates.  Its a weed in my book.

[Matt Wharton]

You don't have to be a super to weigh in on the intrusive nature of bermuda.  Just come on down South, buy any piece of property, and try to grow any kind of lawn that isn't bermuda.  You'll get all the education you need!

Amen!

[Dan Herrmann]

We're in Elverson PA at 750' elevation, and we ended up with a fair amount of bermuda during the summer drought with 100F temps - just like Jason.   For a while, the only green in the roughs was bermuda.

But 2 weeks after the rains started, the fescues and bluegrass came back.  Sure - the bermuda is still there, but it's spotty and tough to find.   

[BCrosby]

Anthony -

Here in ATL we've had good results replacing older tifsport, which was a big disappointment, with tifgrand.

The tifgrand is only two or three years old - so things might change - but so far it has been all we had hoped for. It's resilient, shade tolerant (we sodded some in roughs under trees and it has thrived) and it makes for a terrific turf for green surrounds.

Bob

[Bill_McBride]

Anthony -

Here in ATL we've had good results replacing older tifsport, which was a big disappointment, with tifgrand.

The tifgrand is only two or three years old - so things might change - but so far it has been all we had hoped for. It's resilient, shade tolerant (we sodded some in roughs under trees and it has thrived) and it makes for a terrific turf for green surrounds.

Bob

I played Bob's course in May and agree, that tifgrand is great grass.   It's a whole lot better than common Bermuda or unmoved 419 around the greens. 

[Anthony_Nysse]

Bob,
  Tifgrand is very similar to Celebration-a little darker color, very shade tolerant, a little more coarse and much better at growing over divots and withstanding traffic. Guys are using it on their tees down here. Good grass that tested well in the MTEP trials, too.

[Randy Thompson]

Anthony,
When clubs that I have been involved with convert from common fairways to some form of tiff we have used much higher dosis of round up with sucsess. Eight to ten percent round up, whcih depending on the sprayer can translate out to 4 to 6 gallons per acre. After forty eight hours they lower the height of cut and cut low with baskets and then make a second application. Forty eight hours later your good to go and rotatill and start the base preparation.
How is the common and tiff sport doing on your borders. You mentioned some contamination in these areas that you try to control but have you seen advancment of the tiffsport little by little into the common roughs or do they seem to be holding each other off or do you see the common winning in the battle zone.

[Anthony_Nysse]

Randy,
  Are you sure you got your grasses right? Common is SO MUCH more aggressive than any of the tif hybrids. In fact, the only grass that I have seen more aggressive is Celebration.
  4-6 gallons of Round Up/acre is 11.5-17.5oz/1000. THAT IS WAY OVER the label limit for one application. I'm not saying that that amount doesnt get applied over 3-4 applications, but the most successful regrassing include a Round Up application, followed by a scalping, fertilize, wait 10-14 days for regrowth, spray again, fertilizer again, wait for regrowth and spray one final time. You will not get it all in 2 application over 2-3 days. I know guys that made 5 applications over a 4 month renovation project.