The Great White Experiment

By now you are wondering what is going on along the cart paths.  Long stretches of white turf and weeds, punctuated by areas of green grass.  Alien invasion, a new disease.... nope, just an experiment and an example of the challenges of our multiple types of turf.

 This is Bermuda grass sprayed once with a new compound that suppresses bermuda and several types of weeds.  If we decided to try to reduce or eliminate the bermuda what is the reaction to the turf under its normal summer conditions.  As you can see it has stripped the plant of chlorophyll and weakened the turf.  Multiple applications may eliminate this turf along with multiple weeds at the same time.

Is this something we want?  Our rough consists of 5 to 7 varieties of grass, all different textures and growth habits.  All of them are cool season except the Bermuda grass.  In the spring and late fall it leads to many inconsistencies in the rough.  Of great interest is if we spend money to sod areas with a more desirable species can we stop the bermuda invasion in the summer.

From this test I would say yes,  but at what cost on a large scale?  Do you want to see this look for years to come as we try to reduce the overall population or is it better to play what we have?  As can be seen there is a lot of Bermuda.  In fact when a specific species dies, or becomes diseased you notice how much of the property is covered by that turf.  In our case major areas have a large percentage of Bermuda, the right side of 8 rough below the hill is almost entirely Bermuda.  This grass can make finding a ball extremely tough in the summer months as it nestles to the bottom.

The picture below shows the effect on the 3rd fairway.  Here the test is a little less harsh, and the chance to reduce Bermuda from the Bentgrass fairway is more acceptable.  This is one we would like to pursue, although if we do not attack the rough, this will continue to be an issue, since it creeps in from the edges.

The discoloration of the bentgrass is a little less evident after a few days, but the bermuda is still discolored.  It will take multiple applications to reduce these populations to levels considered to be under control.  Once again, your never sure how much Bermuda you have until you spray the entire surface.  We will continue to evaluate this product over the next few months with repeat applications to some fairway areas and some recent sod to determine how well it accomplishes the task.

As a reference on the strength of this product, the entire 5 acres treated contained only 1.25 ounces of product in 300 gallons of water.  Extremely effective I would say, now I only need to calibrate an eyedropper to measure the dosage!