Turf question

[Jim Johnson]

While admittedly not exactly a GCA topic, perhaps there are others who will relate to the following, so hopefully it is of interest to some. This is aimed mainly at the supers out there.

My front lawn looks like crap. We sodded (Kentucky bluegrass) 21 years ago when the house was built. Years ago we had what I would consider a pretty good looking lawn. Now it's one of the worst on our street. I bag all of my grass clippings whenever I mow (usually about every 5 days). The lawn has a serious buildup of thatch, and at this time of year, I'm wondering what is recommended. We live in western Canada; temps are in the 70's at the moment, but should warm up to the 80's and low 90's in the next month. Weather has been more damp than normal for spring. Winter snows disappeared two months ago.

Any help is really appreciated. Thank you.

JJ

[Craig Sweet]

A nice little dethatching wouldn't hurt...hell, aerify it too while you're at it.

Don't they have some of those "mower rakes" at a rental shop up there in Canada?

Hey, if you're close to good golf and fishing i'll come up and do the work for you! I'll round up my old employees and we'll road trip it!

[Jim Johnson]

Craig,
I've been told it's too late in the season to "power rake"...I guess it rips up the lawn too much.
I could certainly aerify, but I don't think that it would help with the thatch issue.
Good ol' hand raking perhaps?

JJ

[Craig Sweet]

JJ...it's just grass.

You'll have many, many large garbage bags full of thatch...dead grass...when finished.

[TEPaul]

JJ:

Have you put any lyme on it recently?

You know the old Piper and Oakley theory of dumping a ton of lyme on grass to encourage everything to grow! Once that happens then you need to constantly remediate what you want to keep and what you want to kill and after a time you too can have a front lawn that looks as immaculate as a modern golf course but costs a fortune to maintain and is something akin to an "agronomic emergency room"!  

[Micah Woods]

Are you joking? That certainly was not a Piper or Oakley theory.

“There is still room for difference in opinion regarding the desirability of using lime on golf courses, but the weight of the present evidence is that, as good or better results are secured without lime as by its use, certainly so in the case of bents and fescues and probably so in the case of
most other turf grasses.”

C.V. Piper and R.A. Oakley, Green Section Record 1921

[TEPaul]

Micah:

No, I'm not joking. Don't forget that golf agronomy before and around 1910 was unbelievably rudimentary (unknown really) compared to the way we look at it and think of it today.

Macdonald at NGLA had massive problems with his course's agronomy in the very beginning, primarily because he knew no better than to try to grow grass on basically straight sand (no mixed growing medium and water retention medium).

Mcdonald was the first to get in touch with US Dept of Agriculture forage and agricultural crop specialists Piper and Oakley. Piper and Oakley were forage and crop specialist, not golf agronomists. One called himself a botanist and later the other called himself an "agrostologist" In their business of forage and crop specialization for the US Dept of Agriculture they were liberal liming recommenders as a way of sweetening soil to encourage things to grow, particularly crops. Piper and Oakley had not dealt in golf agronomic research before this because it virtually was non-existent in America at that time.

Piper and Oakley, like Macdonald and later Hugh Wilson of Merion and Crump of PVGC in conjunction with them had never dealt in golf agronomics primarily because it basically didn't exist in any type of experimental or scientific way.

What they recommended between around 1908 and 1921 as to the effect or use of liming may've been quite different and probably was. Early golf agronomy students such as Michael Hurzdan certainly believe they all used perhaps too much liming until scientific analysis proved using less was better for golf agronomics.

We have perhaps 2000 letters between Hugh and Alan Wilson of Merion and Piper and Oakley that span between 1911 and the year Wilson died in 1925 and the the difference of opinion over that time on the use of liming golf soil for effective golf agronomics can be seen.

It's pretty obvious in the beginning they were simply trying to get multiple strains of grass to grow for golf and that later they were beginning to understand they were getting too many things to grow that was competing with acceptable golf grass primarily the strains of bents they were beginning to develop themselves. (in the early years the seed merhants were packaging all kinds of seed into their seed bags probably in some sort of Darwinian logic.

Later Piper and Oakley and the other early experimenters found that they did not need of want this type of competition amongst various types of seed.

[Micah Woods]

TEPaul,

Those letters sound very interesting and I should like to read them sometime.

I am aware of Piper and Oakley’s work with forage crops, but I disagree with your assertion that “they were liberal liming recommenders as a way of sweetening soil,” and that they indiscriminately applied these recommendations to golf course turf.

Their _Turf For Golf Courses_ was published in 1917, and they wrote that:

“so far as the turf grasses are concerned, their relations to lime may be very simply stated . . . turf grasses, including Creeping Bent, Rhode Island Bent, Redtop, Red Fescue, Sheep’s Fescue . . . are almost indifferent to lime, being neither appreciably bettered nor injured on most soils except as the liming stimulates the growth of Blue-grass, White Clover, and various weeds.”

Piper and Oakley went on to describe studies begun in Rhode Island in 1905, where acid and alkaline plots of turfgrass were established. They clearly differentiated between agricultural and turf conditions:

“the growth of the grasses in all cases was greater on the alkaline plots than on the acid plots. This larger yield is important agriculturally, but not from a lawn turf standpoint. . . . The lesson from this series of plots is backed up by numerous observations elsewhere . . . If Lime or other alkaline fertilizers are used, weeds and other grasses will likely invade the turf.”

Based on these statements, I would be very surprised if Piper and Oakley recommended lime for general use on golf course turf between 1908 and 1921.

-Micah

[Craig Sweet]

I don't think his alkaline soils up there in western Canada need lime.

[Jim Johnson]

I agree Craig, I don't think I need to apply lime.

Any other thoughts, guys??

JJ

[Craig Sweet]

Dethatch...give her some potassium...some water and boom!

[Michael_Burrows]

Verticut, power rake , whatever you want to call it would be best, as long as you water your lawn after verticut for a week I would say you would be ok.

If you do have Kentucky Bluegrass, then it should heal up pretty good. Almost all sports fields up north are kentucky bluegrass due its rapid growth. Which is good because it can recover pretty fast from wear and stress. kentucky Bluegrass spreads by rhizomes only which is part of the reason why it is such a thatchly grass.  

By the way reserch has shown that clippings only make of 3 - 5 percent of organic matter that makes up thatch. By returing your clippings to your lawn you are returing more nutrients to your lawn. Grass clippings are great slow release fertilizer. Something else you may want to think about.