As a follow-up to my previous post with five articles that I find quite useful and that every greenkeeper should be familiar with, here are five more articles that are sure to contain useful information.

Does the Grass Know the Cost?, by S. Zontek, D. Oatis, D. Bevard, K. Happ, J. Skorulski, B. Vavrek, and A. Moeller of the USGA Green Section and published in the Green Section Record, this article discusses the unit cost of nitrogen and the turfgrass requirment for nitrogen along with phosphorus, potassium, base cations, and micronutrients. Studying this article will help turf managers meet this goal: supplying the grass with what it needs as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Selecting the Right Grass, by John Foy, this article is relevant to warm-season areas, and Foy starts by telling us that with so many "warm-season turfgrass options available, determining the most appropriate is a daunting task." This article provides a comprehensive overview of warm-season grass selection, with particular reference to the southern United States. Used in conjunction with the climatological information presented here, one will have almost all the information necessary to find (or at least get close to choosing) the optimum grass for a particular warm-season area.

The Park Grass Experiment and the Fight Against Dogma, by Micah Woods and Frank Rossi, discusses what we consider to be one of the most interesting and overlooked experiments in the world of turfgrass ecology, yet one that has long been recognized as carrying "lessons of high importance in the growing of golf turf." Begun in 1856, and continuing to this day, the Park Grass experiment at Rothamsted Research shows us that complete fertilizers and calcium carbonate actually increase the amount of weeds, while nitrogen fertilizer alone, in moderate amounts, leads to a sward composed only of fine turfgrasses.

Low-Carb Diet, by Bingru Huang with X. Liu and Q Xu, explains just what it is in that combination of high temperatures and low mowing height that causes creeping bentgrass turf to decline during the summer. Specifically, it is the negative carbohydrate balance that occurs when high temperatures are combined with low mowing heights, that negative balance being when the respiration rate exceeds the photosynthetic rate. The article described what happens, first root death, a decline in cytokinin, and eventually a decline in turf quality. This article explains what the problem is, and understanding that, a turf manager can come up with a number of solutions.

Off-Types in Ultradwarf Putting Greens, by Todd Lowe and John Foy, discusses one of the major problems with bermudagrass putting greens, why this happens, how it can be prevented, and what to do about this problem if it becomes unmanageable. I'm often asked about this, and I am glad to have this excellent article to refer people to with a full explanation.

You'll have noticed that these articles are all from the Green Section Record. This publication, since its introduction in 1921, has served as an invaluable source of information for golf course maintenance around the world. Here's one more article you might like to read, one that I wrote myself, about the first chairman of the USGA Green Section, Charles Vancouver Piper.