golf

By Gary Deters and Eric Watkins

This article was originally published on the Low Input Turf Using Fine Fescues blog.

Winter can lead to turfgrass damage and death, causing challenges for turfgrass managers. And with a changing climate, new challenges are cropping up every year.

Eric Watkins, a professor in the Department of Horticultural Science, is seeking out answers to those challenges, most recently through an $8 million USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative grant. His goal? To better understand the winter stresses that are placed on turfgrass and to identify solutions through plant breeding and best management practices.

Learn more about our research! Three research articles from our group have been published in the September/October 2021 issue of Crop Science.

Check out our team’s latest efforts in educating the public about our work. Articles about the UMN Turfgrass Science team were featured in the October 2021 edition of the MGCSA's Hole Notes publication and Eric Watkins was featured in an article and podcast about bee-friendly lawns!

Registration is n

By Maggie Reiter

Save the date for our late summer/fall field days! Registration now OPEN. Events will be designed for a target audience, about 2-3 hours long, and more casual than in the past.

Turfgrass Field Day: Golf

In collaboration with Minnesota Golf Course Superintendents Association

Check out our team’s latest efforts in educating the public about our work. Dominic Petrella, Sam Bauer, Brian Horgan, and Eric Watkins wrote Fine fescues for golf course putting greens for Golf Course Management magazine (GCM). Learn more about fine fescues' performance as putting greens under minimal management.

By Dominic Petrella

By Andrew Hollman

When people hear that I work with turfgrass, inevitably the question comes up of “what do you do all winter?” The assumption from some people is that when the weather turns cold and you no longer need to mow your lawn, what else is there to be done? If you are involved with the turf industry, you likely know that there is a myriad of things that need to be done after mowing has stopped and before the ground freezes and the snow arrives. Irrigation needs to be blown out, snow mold fungicides sprayed, and covering greens are a few that come to mind for the golf courses.

By Ryan Schwab

The establishment of no mow areas on golf courses is gaining popularity. In Minnesota, fine fescues are typically the species chosen due to their low-input characteristics. Fine fescues grow slowly, and they generally have low nutrient and water requirements, all of which saves golf course resources. They also may provide the desirable aesthetics of a waving pasture with gold-frosted seed heads, which is quite the contrast from the well-manicured playing surfaces of fairways and greens (Figure 1).