I saw a video today with the question "what is your favorite fertility practice?" That segment starts at the 2:00 mark.

Then on Twitter I saw some comments about how funny the answers to that question were. I had a laugh because the answers are correct, but it is the question that misuses the word.

I don't expect the turf industry will change its jargon on this. But if one misuses the word fertility in conversations with the general public, it should not be a surprise if the responses are about fertility.

• C.V. Piper on the word fertility as applied to agriculture
• The implications of sustained low fertility

How's that for a start? "The Walking Greenkeeper" introduced himself this morning. I expect this will be a fun blog to read.

Now for an assortment of things that came to mind today, all of which are in some way related to Joe's blog post.

He wrote about some of his research this winter. Among other things, he mentioned me, MLSN, Jason Haines, and Chris Tritabaugh. "These fellas," he wrote, "and what I consider to be their alternative style to greenkeeping have inspired me ..." -- that's awesome.

So what came to mind? First, the #MLSN approach is about something very specific -- making fertilizer recommendations from soil tests to prevent nutrient deficiencies by ensuring the grass is supplied with enough of each element. However, the approach we have taken with MLSN has attracted interest from turf managers around the world who are interested in minimizing other inputs as well. And it is a lot of interest. I've been surprised that the MLSN newsletter mailing list, started just 6 weeks ago, already has more than 300 subscribers, from more than 30 countries.

If you are interested in the MLSN approach, you can subscribe to the newsletter here.

If you want more than just MLSN, you can sign up to the ATC newsletter here.

Here's an interesting question. Just what is the MLSN approach? Nadeem Zreikat wrote that he prefers efficient to minimalist:

@asianturfgrass great read except I don't tend to agree with minimalist as it's more to do with being efficient. That's how I read MLSN.

— Campbell Chemicals (@campbellturf) March 20, 2017

Here's how I'd describe it. Lots of people are interested in MLSN and in the idea of managing things as efficiently as possible. I'd describe what I try to do, and with MLSN as a part of that, in this way:

For turf management at any site, the first thing to do is to define the conditions that one is trying to produce. Then, produce those conditions with the fewest possible inputs.

One could describe that as efficiency, or as minimalistic. I think both words, and many other words too, can fit the MLSN approach.

I wrote more about that in the Short Grammar of Greenkeeping. To produce the desired conditions, the turf manager manipulates the growth rate. In the Short Grammar, I wrote that greenkeeping can then be defined as modifying the growth rate to get the desired surface conditions. And the grammar provides a framework for adjusting the inputs to produce the desired conditions.

If that all sounds really vague, you'll want to read a great description of that approach in practice. I recommend Jason Haines' Turfhacker summary of everything that's interesting to me as a description of how these principles can be applied.

The whole idea is to produce the conditions we want, doing so with the minimum amount of work. Maybe that's efficiency, or minimalism, or sustainability, or something else. But that's where I'm coming from, that's the type of definition that the MLSN approach fits into, and this is for any type of turf.

I made a huge omission in last month's roundup. I forgot to include the 2016 Ryder Cup: Hazeltine National Turfgrass Team video featuring Chris Tritabaugh.

2016 Ryder Cup: Hazeltine National Golf Club, The Turfgrass Team from Chris Tritabaugh on Vimeo.

This is part of the approach too, and the video shows it. Be passionate about the work. Produce the conditions one is trying to produce. Do so with a minimum of inputs. Or as efficiently as possible. Have fun doing it. Find ways to do it better.

I expect everyone in this business is doing that in some way. It seems to me that the MLSN and Short Grammar approaches have provided a framework from which we can all work on and compare ways to do it better.

The recording of my webinar on preventing nutrient deficiencies is now available in the videoteca section of the Campus del Césped website.

Or watch the English version right here.

This was fun. I hope you'll read the handout too. It is only 4 pages, with lots of white space, and gives a brief overview of this important topic. If you are still interested, then watch the video of the webinar at your leisure, and watch or download the slides too.

Links in English

• Handout in English
• Video in English
• Slides in English

Links in Spanish

• Handout in Spanish
• Video in Spanish
• Slides in Spanish

Apropos of nothing, I really enjoyed this video of El Saler.

Golf El Saler from PAELLA PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

That video makes a nice break from considering hypotheses about identification of the most sustainable grass.

I've seen introduction of seashore paspalum to bermudagrass, and manilagrass to bermudagrass, by hand planting the introduced species into slices cut into the exisiting turf. This post shows seashore paspalum planted into a bermudagrass fairway using that technique.

I've also seen resodding to convert to a different grass, but in a way that doesn't require course closure.

At PGA Catalunya, hybrid bermudagrass was introduced into the creeping bentgrass fairways. These photos show the fairways in 2016, five years after the bermudagrass was added.

The idea was to improve fairway conditions in summer with the bermudagrass, due to the poor irrigation water quality. I've been impressed with the fairway conditions at PGA Catalunya, and also with the technique used to introduce the bermuagrass. These videos of the technique are shared on course superintendent David Bataller's YouTube page.

What technique was used at PGA Catalunya?

First, simulated divots were made in the bentgrass fairways using an aerifier fitted with custom "tines".

Second, a rotovator or landscape tiller was used to make a divot mix from certified Tifway 419 sod and sand.

Third, the divots in the bentgrass fairways were filled with the bermudagrass divot mix.

The result is improved fairway performance during the summer, due to the presence of bermudagrass. And with this technique, the improvement was accomplished rapidly, without closing the course, and used a relatively small amount of purchased sod.

Korakuen in Okayama is one the three great gardens of Japan, and I like it especially because of its expansive noshiba (Zoysia japonica) lawns. In early February every year, a shiba yaki (grass burning) ceremony is held at Korakuen, when the lawns are burned.

The video above shows the ignition of a lawn. The Facebook page of Korakuen has more photos of the shiba yaki ceremony this year.

It is pretty amazing how strange it looks before the lawns start to grow again.

For more about grass burning in Japan, see:

• When the smoke clears away tomorrow ...
• Thatch control by burning

When I watched the Golf Club Atlas interviews with Don Mahaffey last year, I was struck by the comments Don made about the health benefits of golf. Watch them here, starting at the 14:50 mark:

Don mentions things that are known to be good for health -- walking, spending time with other people, spending time in nature, solving puzzles.

That, he says, describes playing 9 holes of golf, but "no one is talking about that sort of thing, about the health benefits of golf ... I've never heard it packaged like that, anywhere, and I think there's opportunity there to change the image of pesticide, chemical, too much water and all of these things that we get branded with. And we talk about sustainability and we're using too much water and all of these things, but golf is good for you."

He's right, and after hearing his comments, I've been more attentive to articles on this subject. Here's a list I've enjoyed reading:

• From the NY Times, How walking in nature changes the brain
• From Landscape and Urban Planning, The benefits of nature experience: Improved affect and cognition
• From PNAS, Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefontal cortex activation
• From Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, Golf: a game of life and death -- reduced mortality in Swedish golf players
• From STERF, Societal benefits of golf -- Inspiration and ideas for local partnership

At Real Club de Golf El Prat, host of this week's Spanish Open, 3,600 trees fell in a violent windstorm on 9 December. The club has shared this video that shows the scale of the damage, and the impressive work that was done in the aftermath of the storm.

RCGEP Viento diciembre from Real Club de Golf El Prat on Vimeo.

That the playing surfaces are in such fine condition this week, after having to deal with the storm damage and all the disruption that caused, shows the skill and effort of the greenkeeping staff at the club.

View from the 10th tee

At the 1st tee, 6 months after the storm that felled 3,600 trees

Creeping bentgrass on the 1st fairway at Real Club de Golf El Prat

The recorded webinar MLSN Guidelines: what they are, and how to use them is now available for viewing in the TurfNet webinar archives.

Direct link to watch the MLSN Guidelines webinar.

There were some questions about how to convert the results from other testing methods to an equivalent value by the Mehlich 3 extraction method. I am going to prepare an explanatory document about this topic, but for now, please see this link:

Conversion equations from the Cornell Nutrient Management Spear program

Here are direct links to other websites I mentioned in the webinar:

• PACE Turf climate appraisal form for estimating how much of an element the grass will use
• the MLSN guidelines
• TurfNet forum discussion on MLSN
• ATC blog posts about fertilizer
• PACE Turf MLSN page
• Just what the Grass Requires article in GCM
• MLSN page on Facebook

Bill Kreuser gave a webinar about soil tests for TurfNet, putting a lot of clear information into this one hour discussion, and closed it out by explaining how he would go about making use of soil tests.

If you are interested in this topic, and would like to know more about soil tests and how the data are generated and the results can be interpreted, you'll really enjoy this webinar. Bill has plenty to say about the right way and the wrong way to do this. Some test results are nonsense. As Bill put it, "you can grow really great turfgrass without dealing with this kind of craziness."

More TurfNet archived webinars here.