The Wow Factor, Seashore Paspalum and Dollar Spot is now posted on the Turf Diseases Blog and may be of interest to those who manage seashore paspalum in Asia.
I will be contributing some posts to the Turf Diseases Blog on topics related turfgrass diseases in Asia. For information about all types of turfgrass diseases on warm and cool season grasses, and for advice on the management of these diseases from expert plant pathologists, you will want to read the Turf Diseases Blog this year.
I visited the Philippines a few times last month and was again impressed by how well manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) performs there. The classic East Course at Wack Wack Country Club in Manila is undergoing a restoration project that leaves the manilagrass greens untouched. The grass on these greens is relatively free of disease, has a very low fertilizer requirement, and provides a fast and firm putting surface. By using native grasses on the fairways (primarily Axonopus compressus, known as Carabao grass in the Philippines) and on the greens, Wack Wack CC's East Course provides a classic test of golf and uses grasses that require almost no inputs apart from mowing and irrigation.
Why do I mention these grasses? Because the use of the native grasses is surprisingly uncommon when golf courses are built or renovated in Southeast Asia today. There are some situations where bermudagrass (Cynodon) may be the right choice, and there are occasions when seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum) is the right choice, but for many golf projects, using native grasses such as zoysiagrass or carpetgrass would be a better choice. Why?
What do I mean by "flexibility in maintenance"? Above we see a native manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) lawn beside swimming pools at the Anvaya Cove development near Subic Bay. At the swimming pool, with virtually no maintenance, zoysia is a foolproof grass. It just grows along, slowly, providing the desired groundcover. Below we see the exact same grass at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (as an aside, do go there if you are ever at Manila -- the cemetery is a beautiful, quiet, and moving place, with 17,202 graves of military dead of WWII).
The native grasses can be maintained to look green and lush, or dry and close-cropped to the ground, and the native grasses don't die. There is less flexibility with imported bermudagrass or seashore paspalum. Without the optimum amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides, the bermudagrass or seashore paspalum cannot provide a good playing surface in Southeast Asia. With native grasses, there is a lot of flexibility in the type of surface that can be created. But don't try to get too flexible with seashore paspalum or bermudagrass, or those grasses will fail.
I was at the Philippines last week to play in the Founders Cup tournament at The Orchard Golf and Country Club. As sponsors of the tournament, Asian Turfgrass Center along with Bernhard and Company were able to enter a team in the sponsors division, and playing off scratch (I don't have an official handicap at present, unfortunately!) along with Steve Wilson, Business Development Manager Asia Pacific for Bernhard, we made a respectable showing at the challenging Palmer and Player courses over which the tournament was contested. The Palmer course has Tifeagle bermudagrass greens, while the Player course has greens of Sea Isle 2000 seashore paspalum. During the tournament, course superintendent Jelly Palmes had the greens on both courses in excellent condition, rolling at a good speed and providing a superb playing surface. Below is the 7th green of the Player course, showing its seashore paspalum green with the par five 9th hole in the background.
I had planned to be at the Philippines for the Founders Cup and to meet other friends in the golf course industry. It turned into a busy week, as I visited Manila Golf Club on the day of my arrival, played in the Chairman's Cup tournament at Sherwood Hills the next morning, went to Wack Wack Country Club and saw the renovation project there, and played practice rounds at Orchard for the Founders Cup. In less than five days I had been to five different golf courses, and later in the week I also went to Manila Southwoods and to TAT Filipinas.
I was at TAT Filipinas Golf Club in October for a turfgrass advisory visit and I was there again this week to meet delegates from the East Asian Seas Congress 2009 who were making a field trip to see the sustainability initiatives at TAT Filipinas under the direction of club president Edna Paña and manager Joe Dagdagan. I spoke with Dr. Mok Mareth (pictured at right), the Senior Minister of Cambodia's Ministry of Environment. We discussed golf and the environment, two subjects which Dr. Mareth and I are both passionate about.
I can actually think of ten simple ways to improve turfgrass conditions -- these are only the first five ways, and I will write more later about another five ways to improve grass. The article I wrote on this topic has been published in Golf Business Asia and can be downloaded here. So what do I think are the first five ways to improve turfgrass conditions?
1. Set course maintenance standards. If we have a certain level of grass quality, and want to reach an improved level of playability or appearance, we need to define what that standard is and what work must be implemented in order to achieve the desired quality level. For more details, an article I wrote on this topic can be downloaded here in English and downloaded here in Chinese (中文). A simple example is grass quality and tolerance of weeds in the fairways. If there is no standard for this, than at what weed threshold are the fairways acceptable, or unacceptable? When I was a golf course superintendent I was not a big fan of these types of standards, thinking them extraneous, but I now think that written standards, no matter how simple, are the starting point for any turfgrass management (or turfgrass improvement) program.
2. Choose the right grass. I cannot overemphasize this enough. There are certain grasses that are well-adapted to certain growing conditions and that can be managed to provide the desired playing surface. There are other grasses that are less well-adapted to your growing conditions and that require a tremendous amount of maintenance in order to produce the desired playing surface. Or perhaps you struggle to achieve the type of playing surface that you want. Would a different species of grass or an improved variety of the one you are currently growing help to improve turfgrass conditions? It seems like a lot of wasted resources to manage grass that is not well-adapted to your site. For more information about this, you can search for the information you are looking for. There are some excellent turfgrass specific information resources available online, and I wrote about the best of them (in English) and you can also download the article about information resources in Chinese (中文). Also, you may wish to read an article I wrote for Golf Business Asia about managing and choosing warm-season grasses. And you can see a selection of photos of different warm-season grasses, along with some advantages and disadvantages of each, at this photo gallery.
3. Fertilize the right amount. This is critical for improving the grass. If I want to be healthier, one of the first things the doctor will tell me to do is to evaluate my diet, right? And I should eat a balanced diet with the right amount of fruits and vegetables and vitamins and minerals and so on. Well, grass is the same way, except it is a lot simpler. With grasses, we can conduct a routine soil nutrient analysis (a laboratory test of the soil's chemical properties) to determine how much of the essential plant nutrients are present in the soil, and how much should be added as fertilizer. In many soils, there is already enough phosphorus to meet the needs of the grass, and in some cases there is enough potassium as well. If there is not enough, then we simply add more. The key element to get right in the fertilization program is nitrogen. This is like me, if I am on a diet, being concerned about how many calories I eat every day. Eating more calories than I burn each day will make me gain weight, while burning more calories than I eat results in me losing weight. If the grass gets too much nitrogen it will grow too quickly, and if the grass doesn't have enough nitrogen it will become yellow and grow too slowly. The goal is to control the growth rate of the grass to create the desired improvement to turfgrass conditions by applying exactly the right amount of nitrogen. For many grasses, a good starting point for the amount of nitrogen to apply is about 3 g N m-2 month-1, during the seasons when the weather is conducive to vigorous grass growth. The exact amount of nitrogen to apply can be adjusted based on the turfgrass performance. For more information about this, see this article I wrote for Golf Course Seminar (in Japanese, 日本語) or this article from the Hawaii GCSA newsletter.
4. Mow with a plan. After choosing the right grass and applying the right fertilizer, there is no way to get the desired quality without mowing properly. That means using mowers with sharpened blades, set at the proper mowing height, and operated at the optimum mowing frequency for a particular area. And as long as the mowers are going to be sent out to mow the grass, why not mow an attractive pattern into the grass? This may be a type of stripe or checkerboard or even no stripes at all, but it takes a plan to achieve the desired appearance after mowing. Get the mowing right and the grass conditions will almost certainly improve.
5. Keep the grass as dry as possible. Or perhaps more accurately, keep the soil as dry as possible. How is that going to improve turfgrass conditions? If the soil is kept dry, there will be more air space in the soil. When the water content of the soil is high, there is not much space for air. Grass roots grow better when there is plenty of air space in the soil, and if you can establish a healthy root system, the playing surfaces will be more stress tolerant and the grass plants will be more healthy. To really manage the soil moisture, I find it is extremely useful to use a soil moisture meter such as the Hydrosense from Campbell Scientific, the Theta-Probe from Delta-T Devices, or the TDR Meters from Spectrum Technologies. For most turfgrass sites, I like to maintain the soil moisture at more than 10% (by volume) and less than 25%. You can find the optimum range for your site, and by using one of these meters, you can monitor the soils as they dry, only applying water when the soil reaches the critical point when the grass will begin to wilt. I wrote about soil water management extensively in this article for Golf Course Seminar (in Japanese, 日本語) and in Irrigation for Bentgrass Greens: Theory and Practice (for the Kanto Golf Association and also in Japanese, 日本語). If you are interested to know more about this, please send me an e-mail inquiry or leave a comment here.
TurfNet.com is an excellent resource for golf course superintendents and it is well worth being a member if you like to stay abreast of the latest developments in golf course maintenance. The online seminars (or webinars) are another valuable resource as they are free to TurfNet members. But even for non-members, there are some new webinars just posted that are free to anyone, and these may be especially interesting for people who manage or are interested in managing seashore paspalum. Want to know which seashore paspalum variety may be best for your conditions? Which paspalum gets the most (or least) dollar spot? How to deal with bermudagrass infestation of a seashore paspalum turf? What strategies to use to deal with poor irrigation water quality? You can watch these on-demand webinars to find out.
To view these recorded programs, go to the webinar archive section of TurfNet.com and you can watch on-demand webinars by scientists and superintendents including Stewart Bennett, CGCS, Dr. Bryan Unruh and Dr. Dennis Shepard. All part of a "Perspectives on Paspalum" seminar held in September at Myrtly Beach, these seminars provide a wealth of information and tips about seashore paspalum management on golf courses.
In Dr. Unruh's talk, he mentioned a research project he did entitled "Seashore Paspalum Performance to Potable Water". This research paper is available for download here and includes useful information about different seashore paspalum varieties (including Sea Isle 2000, SeaDwarf, Seaspray, Sea Isle Supreme, Salam, and others) and their performance when irrigated with potable water. If you are considering a paspalum variety for your course, you will want to watch Dr. Unruh's talk and read the paper -- not all varieties are created equal, especially when it comes to dollar spot susceptibility. And not all varieties are the same when it comes to drought tolerance either. Check out the research results before you choose a grass for your site. At the Asian Turfgrass Center's research facility, we have seen a big difference in the way different seashore paspalum varieties respond to drought stress.
Sea Spray seashore paspalum seed really is grown in Oregon. Gordon Zielinski sent me the above photo from his Sea Spray seed field near Brooks. This is at sunrise with Mt. Hood in the background and the seashore paspalum field almost ready for harvest. We use the seed in tropical areas, but it is grown in the heart of Oregon's cool season grass seed production area at about 45° N latitude.
I met Gordon Zielinski, an executive with Scotts Professional Seed at his farm last week just north of Salem, and we looked at three of his fields of Sea Spray about one month out from harvest. Zielinski told me that the seed is produced at Oregon because the seeds produced in that climate are more viable. In tests conducted in hotter climates, the seeds did not fill as well, so the production of seed is now done on a few select fields in Oregon. I never would have thought that a warm-season grass seed such as Sea Spray would be produced in a cool place such as Oregon. But the climate there is apparently just right for the production of good quality Sea Spray seeds.
We have grown Sea Spray seashore paspalum at Thailand and have found that it performs well, especially out-performing some other varieties of seashore paspalum such as Salam or Saltene in tolerating drought and in recovery from drought. Salam seashore paspalum at Thailand can die when supplemental irrigation is not applied. The Sea Spray paspalum appears to have much better drought tolerance than does the Salam.
A fascinating project looking at turfgrass growth in waterlogged conditions is being conducted at Singapore's HortPark by graduate student Vivek Govindasamy and his advisor Dr. Kenneth Marcum, Senior Researcher with CUGE Research - Turf Science. At Singapore there is a lot of rain, averaging almost 2.5 meters annually, the soils are often saturated with water, and in low-lying areas with poor drainage the grass is sometimes underwater.
We don't know how different warm-season turfgrass species will respond to waterlogged soils, and Vivek's project will give some idea about which grasses can tolerate waterlogged soils most effectively, and may provide some idea as to what mechanism allows for that tolerance. Grasses are being grown in plastic tubs that maintain water at levels to either mimic normal soil moisture levels, waterlogged soils, or completely immersed turfgrass plants. Among the grasses being tested in these conditions are seashore paspalum (Paspalum vaginatum), zoysiagrass (Zoysia matrella), and carpetgrass (Axonopus compressus).
Vivek is measuring the chlorophyll content of the grass leaves as an index of plant health and will eventually be inspecting the roots to search for possible aerenchyma development in the grasses most tolerant to waterlogged conditions. The results of this research project will be very useful in that they will provide guidance on which grasses should be chosen for planting in areas susceptible to waterlogged soils. The upcoming CUGE International Turfgrass Seminar on 29 and 30 October may provide a chance to learn about some preliminary observations from these experiments.
Sea Spray is a seeded variety of seashore paspalum available from The Scotts Co. I have done experiments with this grass since 2005, first measuring how it grew in different sand types in a greenhouse experiment at Cornell University, and later measuring germination percentage of the seeds at Thailand and evaluating the grass for its general performance characteristics. At the our research facility near Bangkok, we have grown Sea Spray at both putting green height and at fairway height. The photo at right shows Sea Spray mowed at 4 mm during the Asian Turfgrass Field Day earlier this year.
We have tested the germination and the growth of this grass at Thailand and I have also seen it at Hong Kong. In appearance and in texture, the Sea Spray compares favorably with the vegetatively propagated seashore paspalum cultivars that I have seen. We have also observed, at Thailand, that pots of the Sea Spray that were allowed to go dormant from drought, upon re-watering the pots, recovered faster than did pots of Salam seashore paspalum that had also gone dormant. So there may be improved drought tolerance or faster drought recovery with this variety compared to the commonly used Salam variety.
The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) have posted a video about Sea Spray use at a new course in Mexico at the GCSAA TV website:
I have posted a selection of photos of different grasses on the Asian Turfgrass Center photo galleries at flickr. The photo galleries at www.asianturfgrass.com are one of the most viewed portions of the site, and the photos at flickr are easier to find by searching, viewers can leave comments on the photos, and there are more options for viewing and using the photos. I hope you find them interesting, please sign up here to receive updates when new photos are posted, and please let me know if there are any grass-related photos you would like to see.
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