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Presented in partnership with Syngenta
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When the heat is on
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The greens at East Lake GC in Atlanta are Crenshaw creeping bentgrass. Photo courtesy of East Lake GC |
As East Lake Golf Club and Ralph Kepple, CGCS, headed into September, the course, the superintendent and the entire southeastern U.S. had endured a month of extremely high temperatures with little rain. “The average low was about 76 and the high was about 96,” says Kepple. Not what a superintendent wants to see just before hosting The Tour Championship.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, August 2007 temperatures were 4 degrees warmer than the 20th century average, the warmest August in the southeastern U.S. in 113 years. August 2007 was also the fifth-driest month ever recorded in the region.
Although the state of Georgia was operating under water restrictions, Kepple said that water was not as much of a problem as the heat. The watering restrictions did not apply to the creeping bentgrass greens, which received adequate water, and the bermudagrass and zoysiagrass tees and fairways can survive with minimal irrigation but “bounce right back when they are watered.”
When the PGA Tour moved the tournament from the beginning of November to the second week of September, Kepple knew that the Crenshaw creeping bentgrass greens would not be at their best, even after a normal summer. “It’s nearly impossible to have firm greens on creeping bentgrass at the end of a hot summer — there’s not enough root system left,” says the 25-year GCSAA member. As it was, the excessive heat stressed the roots because “the soil temperature never had a chance to cool down.”
Melodee Fraser, a turfgrass breeder with Pure-Seed Testing in Rolesville, N.C., concurs with Kepple’s assessment. “It was a very extreme summer, a record August in temperatures and only 1 inch of rain in North Carolina — and that’s farther north than Georgia,” she says. “Just extraordinary stress. There are limits to what bentgrass can take. You hit a certain temperature and the roots just start to go.”
Fraser says that turfgrass breeders continue to select bentgrasses for their ability to withstand heat stress. The turf plants on the research plots are planted as mowed spaced-plants, and they are not irrigated. The survivors are then recombined with other varieties in an attempt to get the genes for heat tolerance into those varieties.
“It’s a long process to get plants that have all the characteristics we are looking for,” Fraser says. “We’re still trying. We work on developing bentgrass varieties all the time. We have varieties that are so much better than what we had. They’re improved in disease resistance and heat resistance, but it’s still a cool-season grass.”
Recognizing the limitations of a cool-season grass in Atlanta, East Lake GC has decided to change its greens to a dwarf bermudagrass. Kepple says, “The club needed to decide whether a change to bermuda made sense for us as a club.” At press time, the club had not decided which cultivar to use, but Mini-Verde and Champion are under consideration.
Bayer Environmental Science announces its formulation of Ronstar herbicide has received registration for use on dormant golf course turf. Ronstar Flo, a flowable herbicide that contains oxadiazon, the same active ingredient as Ronstar 50 WSP, offers pre-emergence control of goosegrass, crabgrass, annual bluegrass and other turf weeds such as annual sedge. The new formulation is registered for use on dormant established bermudagrass, zoysiagrass and St. Augustinegrass. Syngenta Professional Products announces Robert Goglia as its new market manager for lawn care. Goglia will direct all Syngenta programs and operations in the lawn and landscape markets. He previously worked for Syngenta as a territory manager in the Northeast and as a territory and account manager for Monsanto Co. |
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