SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/141613
Organic matter accumulation in the top couple inches of the surface can begin to act like silt and clog the macropores that conduct air and drainage water. Tom Serensits, manager of Penn State's Sports Surface Research Center, has done significant work using Primo on these sandbased fields. His research showed that if Primo is applied all growing season stopping sometime in early August, that a field can experience as much as a 20% reduction in divoting into November. You can watch a video of Tom's work by going to ssrc.psu.edu and selecting 'SportsTurfScoop' in the left hand menu. Using all of these techniques often isn't enough to allow the turf manager to maintain a consistent turf stand. Thus all but a handful of natural grass NFL stadia resod at least 1.5 times per year and as many as four times per year, bermudagrass fields included. We have been working with sod companies to improve the quality of their sod for these in-season resod jobs. This has truly become a science. The team is on the road next week, so it is de- www.stma.org cided that the old sod will be stripped, new sod will be harvested and laid, and a game will be played on it 10 days later. Many of the techniques suggested above are employed in the sod field, before harvesting, to reduce the divot potential of newly laid sod. Kentucky bluegrass cultivar selection is also a factor. Personally, I believe that Kentucky blue breeding is moving away from what sports fields need. I believe that the cultivars we used 20 years ago were more divot resistant than the cultivars today. We are looking for aggressive rhizome producers and typically those cultivars are poor seed producers and have been abandoned by growers in Oregon due to the low yields per acre during seed production. While today's cultivars are more attractive and more disease resistant, they are also more prone to divoting. We have begun to play with some old cultivars to determine their divot resistance and see if selections can be made in order to breed grasses specifically for these high-end sand-based fields. Evan Mascitte, an MS candidate working in our project, has decided to seriously investigate the preharvest conditioning of sod to be used for in-season resodding. We'll be reporting on that work in another issue. And remember: some of the best, in any business, are so good they make their jobs look easy, when in reality they are hard-working professionals performing well. n Dr. McNitt has been with The Pennsylvania State University for 30 years. Presently he is Director of Penn State's Center for Sports Surface Research (ssrc.psu.edu) where he conducts research relating to athletic field surface characterization and golf green construction and maintenance. Dr. McNitt is also the Program Coordinator for the 4-year turfgrass science major and the Basic & Advanced Certificate as well as the Associate, Bachelors, and Masters of Professional Studies Programs offered through Penn State's World Campus Online Learning. In 2010 he was inducted into Penn State University's College of Agricultural Sciences Academy of Teaching Excellence. SportsTurf 21