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/621615
FIELD SCIENCE 36 SportsTurf | January 2016 www.sportsturfonline.com FACILITY & OPERATIONS spray or put out a granular app. Budgets have been lower the past few years, and have cut out almost completely our con- tracted services budget. That being said, our fields get used more and more, and we haven't seeded an entire field in 3 years. We had great success with a late summer slice-seeding. Keeping my fingers crossed! Bruce H. Suddeth, director building & landscape services, University of South Carolina Upstate As far as the 2016 plans I can only think of a couple things we are going to change up: This year we used some quick release Ag-grade fertilizers after we transitioned out the rye to give the bermuda a quick boost along with another shot in July once the grass began to run horizontally. This seemed to push the fertilizer more along with our standard fertilizer program with slow release mate- rials. These combined with a PGR in July, August, and early September really made the turf fill in great. We are also going to get more aggressive with aerification in 2016 as long as field schedules will allow. There may have to be some camps that will have to deal with aerification holes and topdressing, but we feel it's going to benefit the health, playabil- ity, and safety when it comes time for game day. Tim VanLoo, CSFM, manager, athletic turf and grounds, Iowa State I have no major differences planned. I may change things if the weather dictates me to change. Basically, I start with an idea of what I want to do, usually close to what we have done in the past and let the weather dictate if that plan needs adjustment or not. Seems like some new technology every year sparks enough of my interest to try something new. It's one of the reasons I never want to miss an STMA Conference! New technology that makes our expectation of perfection closer to a reality is always something I am willing to try. Michael Boettcher, director/grounds, Milwaukee Brewers We had a great growing season here in Milwaukee during the 2015 season. The turf seemed to respond well to our agronomi- cal practices as it relates to our fertilization and cultivation/ aerification. Though we had a good year, we are always looking for ways to improve. We will re-evaluate our fertilizer program and see where we can make some modifications to get a more consistent, quality surface every game of the season, although Mother Nature usually has the most impact at the end of the day. For our clay surfaces, we will continue to patch and level our surfaces every day to maintain them at a high level. As new products continue to emerge, we will test certain ones here at the park that has potential to perform better within the arches of our retractable roof here at Miller Park! A lot change isn't necessarily desired at this time as the input from players has been quite good about our current playing surface, but like I stated, always looking to improve! Brian F. Bornino, CSFM, sports turf crew chief, Purdue University I sit down with my staff each winter to discuss the previous year and the upcoming year for each facility that we maintain. I'm a firm believer in making adjustments no matter how bad/good the year went; things could always be made slightly better! With that being said, we will look at any new technology or advance- ments made in the previous year and how that might fit into what we are doing. The past 2 years we've been very fortunate that our budget has allowed us to incorporate fraze mowing into the maintenance practices for our Bermuda soccer and football fields. We've dis- cussed possibly expanding that to our Kentucky bluegrass baseball and softball fields immediately after their seasons end for the removal of poa annua. By changing the type of fertilizer (to poly- mer coated), we were able to reduce the amount of fertilizer used on our cool-season fields this past season; this will be something we will look more into this winter to see about expanding further. Lastly, as a crew, we've had a few conversations about mak- ing an attempt to grow one of our Bermuda fields without transitioning out and trying to manage both grasses year round since we've experienced some pretty harsh winters and below average summer temperatures over the past 2 years; not exactly ideal bermudagrass growing conditions. Andrew Siegel, groundskeeper, University of Texas-Arlington As we are getting ready for spring with baseball and softball about to kickoff, we are doing a few small things differently. We are finishing up fall practices this week [mid-November] and getting ready for a second round of rye to put down. In the middle of October we put out half of the rye so we could get a decent stand in case we had an early freeze. This was something we tried last year and it worked well. This season, however, I still went back and aerated the infield, and areas of compac- tion before seeding the second time. Last season I did not do it and, I believe I paid the price when those areas wore quicker in January before we began warming up again. We have also raised the mowing height on rye from 5/8" last year to 3/4" this season. I am hoping this coupled with a more intense fertility program focusing on root growth and hardi- After the field renovation last year we are not planning on any changes. We had a really good year and hate to change things when they seem to be working. — Brock Phipps, head groundskeeper, Springfield Cardinals