John Mascaro's Photo Quiz Answers from page 17
This brown and green turf was a mystery to the sports turf manager at this facility so he called in a person who had years of experience as a former sports turf manager at the University of Miami. He too was puzzled by the appearance of the field as they looked perfectly fine about 2 ½ weeks before this picture. To figure things out, he had them turn on their irrigation system and found that there were several heads that were not operating properly. Some were not turning, some were not adjusted to full circle and some were even clogged with just a dribble coming out. The field had been overseeded with ryegrass and it had germi- nated nicely during the South Florida December that even pro- duced some mid-90 degree days. Suddenly the area got hit with back to back cold fronts that brought two pretty hard freezes to the area. The brown areas reflect the areas of the turf that the irri- gation malfunctioned, which allowed the turf to dry out in the high temperatures and the ryegrass died revealing the dormant bermudagrass. The green areas are the areas that the irrigation system was working properly and the ryegrass had survived both the heat and the freeze. The brown areas of dormant bermuda- grass recovered in a couple of weeks and everyone was happy once again.
Photo submitted by Kevin Hardy, president of Ballpark Mainte- nance, Inc., Miami, FL.
If you would like to submit a photograph for John Mascaro's Photo Quiz please send it to John Mascaro, 1471 Capital Circle NW, Ste # 13, Tallahassee, FL 32303 call (850) 580-4026 or email to john@turf-tec.com. If your photograph is selected, you will receive full credit. All photos submitted will become property of SportsTurf maga- zine and the Sports Turf Managers Association.
www.stma.org
SportsTurf 33
