If you have yard, you know the perennial chore of painstakingly nourishing and meticulously preening it to a lush green carpet in the Spring only to have it fade to brown and yellow each fall. A new study from a coalition of university turf grass researchers says there may be a better way to keep that grass greener longer.
Wendell Hutchens is an assistant professor of turf grass science at the University of Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and co-author of the report, published in Crop, Forage & Turfgrass Management Journal in August. He says the research, which was originally commissioned by the golf course superintendent's association, looked at the soil fertility, mowing height and moisture of hybrid bermudagrass golf courses in Maryland and Virginia.
"We were looking at kind of three basic aspects for improving fall green color, winter survival, and spring green-up of bermudagrass," he said. “ this really could be applied across the board, whether it be for sports fields, you know, athletic fields, for home lawns, even for sod farmers, I mean, they struggle with the same issues.”
The study focused on warm weather turf grasses in what is known as the transition zone an area that stretches from Maryland and Virginia on the east coast through Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri and all the way California in the west.
"I would say over 85% of Arkansans have warm season grasses,” Hutchens said. “And that includes zoysiagrass or centipedegrass, St. Augustine grass, and then obviously bermudagrass. So you can take these same strategies to a certain extent, they can be effective across the board."
He says the study had three major findings: One - that applying slow release nitrogen late in the growing season had a positive effect on extending green color and improving soil health.
Two: that raising mowing height as winter approaches helped reduce competition from weeds.
"And then finding number three.. that the plant will actually get really dry during the wintertime. And so even though the plant is dormant, it can actually wilt or dry out too much,” he explained. “And so we wanted to test, okay, what about winter irrigation? Could we actually apply maybe one or two irrigation events during the winter prior to a forecasted freeze event? And also water has been shown to be a really actually a pretty good insulator for certain crops, like for example, peach growers, they'll irrigate their peaches prior to a major frost event to help insulate the plant. And so we thought, well, maybe the same thing could actually work on bermudagrass. Turns out it does."
And while the big headline of this study is the aesthetically pleasing green lawn, Hutchens says keeping turf grass healthy and thriving throughout the year isn't just for looks.
"But from an ecosystem benefit, healthy turf grass stabilizes soil, sequesters carbon, they cool the environment, they reduce noise pollution,” He said. “So there are a lot of ecosystem benefits. And if you have a dead lawn in the spring, it's ecosystem services are rendered moot essentially,"
He added the study could be particularly useful for sports grounds managers.
"If you have healthy, dense turf grass, natural turf grass, it's a much safer service for athletes,” Hutchens said. “If you can come out of the spring with a nicer field, obviously you're going to have a safer playing surface."
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