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/560546
www.stma.org September 2015 | SportsTurf 15 can overseed it again in the fall." Several factors led Winka to come to this decision. "What started my process is we went through a couple of really bad winters where we had a lot of winterkill on our bermuda. Once we transitioned out the overseed we were like, 'Oh, what do we do now? We've either got to re-sprig, or re-seed, or resod.' And by doing that, that means the fields have got to be closed down for a period of time. Between that, and a new direction in our complex wanting to be able to play more and more hours, and become almost a 12-month of the year complex, those were the two things that really precipitated my trying this experi- ment," Winka says. "It's a gamble in the transition zone from year to year as far as how rough was the winter, do we have winterkill, how hot is the summer? Is it going to be hot and great for growing bermuda? Or is it going to be cool and mild and it's just not going to fill in very quick and be slow to grow? All of those factors are kind of why I've done what I've done," Winka says. "If it gets really hot and I start to lose my bluegrass or ryegrass, I'm not really worried because if it's that hot that I'm losing my cool season turf, my warm season turf that I have in there is growing like crazy, so it will fill in those areas. In years when I have a cool, mild summer and bermuda is not growing as well as I want it to, I still have plenty of cool season turf out there to make a nice, safe, playable surface." He says the biggest change he's had to make to his management program is the way he fertilizes. Rather than pushing the bermudagrass through over fertil- izing to get it to grow and fill in, he now applies foliar and slow release fertilizers with significantly less N. He does two granular apps (spring and fall) and a weekly or biweekly foliar feed with slow release N for a yearly total of just 4 lbs. of N per 1,000 sq.ft. He's also introduced frequent aerification into the program and increased the fungicides used to keep disease at bay. The results have been remarkable. Winka tracks usage hours on the fields and can quantify performance. On just one field that before the changeover could only support less than 300 hours of play, the same field is now supporting nearly 1,100 hours of play. Winka's new management program has caught the attention of turfgrass researchers at the University of Missouri, University of Kentucky and Virginia Tech. Winka says plans are underway to conduct trials on his methods at all three universities. TWO-GRASS SYSTEM RESEARCH Dr. Michael Goatley, professor and exten- sion turfgrass specialist at Virginia Tech, is eager to learn more about Winka's "two grass system." Goatley says to make the system work, he thinks sports turf managers will have to "be very careful in your management not to shift competi- tive advantage to one or another through fertilization or irrigation." A professed fan of bermudagrass for sports turf in the transition zone, Goatley says the varieties that stand out in NTEP, and his own university wear toler- ance research, are: Patriot, NorthBridge, Latitude 36 and PremierPRO "that is just coming on the market and has intrigued me for 15 years." Seeded bermudagrass varieties that have done well in testing, he says, are Riviera and Yukon. Still, with all of the research and all of the testing on grasses that will grow in the transition zone, NC State's Miller says suc- cess all comes down to a facility's specific location. Miller says, "It depends on where you are located in the transition zone and what is best adapted to you." ■ ST On just one field that before the changeover could only support less than 300 hours of play, the same field is now support- ing nearly 1,100 hours of play.