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/433388
8 SportsTurf | December 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com Field Science | By Dan Hargey and Ben Wherley F rom the transition zone southward, bermudagrass has become the Cadillac of warm-season turfgrass athletic fields. When provided ideal growing conditions and proper maintenance, bermudagrass offers wear toler- ance and recuperative ability that is difficult to match. However, once the colder temperatures and shorter days of fall set in, growth slows and bermudagrass enters a dormancy period, often last- ing 4 to 6 months, depending on the location. It is during these late fall and winter months that the cumulative effects of wear can become problematic. Whether for football, soccer, or baseball, turf managers are continually confronted with the challenge of maintaining safe, yet aesthetically desirable playing surfaces for much if not all of the year. Winter overseeding has long been one means of achieving this goal for many transition zone and southern turf managers. Athletic field managers commonly elect to overseed with perennial or turf-type annual ryegrass due to their rapid germination, desirable color, and wear tolerance, which ultimately provides good physical protection to the underlying dormant bermudagrass. However, while these grasses can provide excellent quality and function during fall and winter, achieving good spring transition back to bermudagrass can sometimes be a challenge. This is often the case during years when persistently cool, wet, and/or cloudy spring conditions prevail. For perennial ryegrass, selective products such as the sulfonylurea class of herbicides have become an effective tool for assisting the turf manager in producing a timelier, consistent, and reliable transition back to bermudagrass year after year. It should be noted that herbicides are generally less of an option for aiding transition of annual ryegrasses due to their lack of sensitivity to sulfonylurea herbicides. Given concerns with budget cuts and municipal irrigation water restrictions imposed in many areas of the southern US in recent years, some turf managers are finding it increasingly difficult to justify the practice of overseeding, while giving increased consideration to use of colorants during the dormancy period. Although a municipality may allow an irrigation variance during establishment, irrigating every 7 or even 14 days through the fall and winter might not be adequate for maintaining desired levels of density and growth due to excessive play or limited rainfall in many regions. Yet when not overseeded, months of wear and traffic on dormant bermudagrass can become particularly detrimental. The primary objectives of this study were to 1) evaluate and compare winter performance of overseeded perennial and turf-type annual ryegrass blends under limited irrigation and traffic, and 2) evalu- ate the benefit of fall colorant-treatment to bermudagrass and compare effects to overseeded or dormant turf. Methodology This study was conducted at the Texas A&M University Turfgrass Research Field Laboratory, College Station, from October 2013 through May 2014 on a stand of Tifway bermudagrass grown on a fine sandy Winter overseeded vs. colorant-treated bermudagrass under water restrictions The authors evaluating plot establishment early in the study.