 Planting the right seed can result in significant cost reductions for your course. |
Many parts of the country faced record temperatures and severe droughts this summer. Combined with shrinking budgets and growing water and pesticide restrictions, it’s no wonder golf courses are looking for new ways to save money, use less water and be better environmental stewards. One solution taking root with more superintendents is to convert their turf – mainly fairways and tees – from a cool-season grass to a cold-hardy Bermudagrass.
Researching this topic felt at times like I was writing a thesis as there was so much information to distill. The USGA has supported research on this topic since the early 1980s; I only scratch the surface there.
The trend, though, of moving warm-season grasses further north is not new, but it’s happening more frequently as new seed varieties are patented and become more widely available. New Bermudagrass seed varieties such as zoysia, riviera, patriot and more recently yukon are more cold hardy and tolerant to extreme heat, providing viable alternatives to cooler-season bentgrasses. In many cases, these seeded Bermudagrasses also use less water and require fewer pesticides and fertilizers.
“In our region, with the newer varieties of Bermudagrass for fairways such as riviera and Patriot, we are seeing one or two conversions per year,” says Darin Bevard, USGA Green Section agronomist in the Mid-Atlantic region. “Part of the decision is water, but also the reduction in pesticide use for fairways is dramatic with Bermudagrass. With tighter budgets, more courses were having a difficult time providing necessary inputs to maintain cool season fairways. They had good fairway conditions in the spring and early summer, but once the heat hit, they struggled to keep the fairways in good condition and the turfgrass quality eventually declined. Bermudagrass has provided a good option to have better fairway quality throughout the growing season.”
The one downside of Bermudagrass, says Bevard, is the dormancy period that lasts from late October until mid-April to early May. “Some golfers just don’t want the brown color of the dormant months,” he adds.
Zoysia grass has been around since about 1995, but it took a while to get the production levels up. “This is one of those grasses that has the broadest range of survivability – all the way from the equator to lower Canada, New York and Rhode Island,” says Tim Bowyer, agronomist with the Patten Seed Co. “It’s an efficient product. It grows when you need it, recovers, goes to sleep and then is ready to play the next season with no change in quality.”
Rob Ryan, superintendent at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Sellersburg, Ind., has witnessed first-hand the efficiency and survivability of this seed. Hidden Creek converted all the fairways on its 18-hole course from ryegrass to zenith zoysia Bermudagrass in 2006. The ryegrass always had a lot of disease problems. And, in the mid-summer heat, the turf suffered. Ryan had to irrigate frequently to keep the turf green and he had to use lots of fungicides to combat disease. Despite these agronomic practices, it was still a struggle. “Some summers no matter what we did, the heat was too much,” he says. “It’s a tough grass to grow.”
After switching to zoysia on his fairways and tee boxes, five years on, the savings, he says, “are unbelievable.” He is such a fan of the grass variety that he even started a sod farm and is selling zoysia to others.
Ryan estimates he has saved between $50,000 and $75,000 every year from his budget. “We have cut our water usage more than 60 percent, cut fungicides by 90 percent, cut herbicides by 75 per cent, cut fertilizer by 75 cent, totally stopped using insecticides and are able to spend more time on other areas of the golf course. As well, with the ryegrass we had to overseed every fall, which we don’t do anymore.”
Zoysia is a low-maintenance grass that likes drought. “It has to be really hot and dry for 10 or more days before you even have to think about watering,” he adds.
Riviera is another seeded Bermudagrass that courses are switching their fairways to. Bretton Woods Country Club in Germantown, Md., which is located right on the Potomac River, converted to riviera several years ago. When superintendent Brian Bupp took over the job at Bretton Woods in the fall of 2005, only one-third of the turf cover on the fairways was alive and two-thirds of what was alive was Bermudagrass.
“Every other hole had a patch of Bermuda in it,” Bupp explains. “In consecutive years of failing turf, lots of Poa annua and ryegrass, they converted to bentgrass at the same time... it was a recipe for disaster.”
Facing budget constraints, Bupp had to make a choice. “We weren’t going to have the budget to go over the patches of Bermudagrass we had, so I figured if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Bupp considered all the options of the new warm-season Bermudagrass varieties such as Patriot, Yukon and riviera. They chose riviera, and in the summer of 2006, Bretton Woods began the conversion, which Bupp says cost less than $30,000. “We didn’t put any fungicide down, only pesticides that spring and some growth regulators and herbicides to kill things off before we started seeding. With the money we saved from our normal pesticide budget, we had enough to purchase all the fertilizer and seed we needed.”
Over five years, where previously Bupp would ask for an annual pesticide budget of $100,000, he now spends less than $20,000. Riviera also requires less water; the Bermudagrass is rooted so deeply that once it gets going in the spring by the middle of June there is not much need to irrigate. “In two out of the five years, we have used less than two pounds of nitrogen on the fairways,” Bupp adds.
Yukon, ‘Lattitude 36’ and ‘Northbridge’ – future seed solutions. Dr. Leah Brilman, from the Seed Research of Oregon, says Yukon, which was has been on the market for several years and was developed by Oklahoma State, is probably the most cold-tolerant of the seeded Bermudagrasses. Research has shown Yukon uses 25 percent less water than hybrid Bermudas. Some of Yukon’s other attributes include: superior turf quality, extended fall color and fast divot recovery. Brilman says they’ve recently seen an increase in usage of this seed variety.
“We talked to a small nine-hole course in Missouri recently that has gradually been converting from cool season fairways and tees to Yukon,” she says. “He has done this gradually over time. The fairways where warm-season grass is now he has not had to irrigate at all versus quite a bit previously… the quality of turf is also better. It’s not for everyone because of the dormancy factor, but one of Yukon’s advantages is that it also greens up earlier in the spring.”
Oregon State is conducting trials looking at how much water is needed just to keep functional turf species alive. “We took them almost to the wilt point and then rewatered them,” says Brilman. “They took much less water than what people would think as new cultivars are more drought tolerant than old ones.”
In its first vegetative releases since Patriot Bermudagrass in 2002, Oklahoma State recently developed two more cold-hardy, vegetative Bermudagrass cultivars: ‘Lattitude 36’ and ‘Northbridge,’ which have been licensed to Sod Solutions for sale and distribution in the transition zone and southern areas of the U.S. Lattitude 36 has blades that are finer textured and Northbridge is faster to establish. In a recent article for the USGA’s Green Section Record, entitled, “The search for cold-hardy Bermudagrass cultivars,” USGA agronomist Mike Kenna described the benefits of these new seeds.
“Both these offer slight improvements over Patriot Bermudagrass, particularly for traffic tolerance and spring green-up. The turfgrass quality is comparable to ‘Tifway’ Bermudagrass. The major strengths of ‘Lattitude’ and ‘Northbridge’ are exceptional turf quality, fine texture, improved winter hardiness, early spring green-up and high sod density and strength.”
As the examples illustrate, the research is ongoing. Academics, governments and turfgrass producers continue to conduct trials to determine which cultivars can withstand the heat best and grow, thrive and provide pleasing playing conditions all season long in colder climates, all the while saving superintendents labor and money. At the end of the day, each greenkeeper must determine what’s right for their property and growing conditions.
“There is no one answer,” concludes Bowyer. “Most of the new seeds can be applied in any circumstance, but it has to be your answer if it is going to work.”
David McPherson is based out of Toronto and is a frequent contributor to GCI.
|
