Fine fescue

Learn more about our research! Two new research articles from our group have been published in Crop Science. Florence Sessoms and Eric Watkins have published an article on heat stress in cool season turfgrasses, and Dominic Petrella and Eric Watkins have published an article on the differences in shade responses in the fine fescues.

By Dominic Petrella

When we think about turfgrass shaded by trees we as researchers often focus on reductions in light intensity, reductions in the red to far-red ratio (R/FR ratio) along with other changes in spectral quality, competition for water and mineral nutrients, and alterations to temperature compared to full sun environments. However, another challenge for turfgrass plants under shade is exposure to sunflecks.

Learn more about our research! Two new research articles from our group have been published in Crop Science.

Check out our team’s latest efforts in educating the public about our work!  We have a webinar video and two articles to share.

A video recording, Lawn Care Best Management Practices featuring Shane Evans, from our Watering Wisdom webinar series has been posted.  If you are interested in growing a healthy lawn with less water, please consider watching the other webinar recordings in our series!

This video is a recording of a webinar we conducted on August 18, 2020 as part of the Twin Cities Lawn Irrigation Efficiency Study funded by the Metropolitan Council and the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. We also have a PDF of PowerPoint slides from the presentation.

As one of the most widely known turfgrass research programs in the world, the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) has generated a large volume of turfgrass evaluation data over the last several decades, including data on fine fescues. The Turfgrass Science team is working with researchers from the Computer Science Department and U-Spatial to display this information in a better way to help consumers choose which fine fescue cultivars to plant in their yards.

Check out our team’s latest efforts in educating the public about our work!  We have two webinar videos and an article to share.

By Michael Barnes

Weeds

• UMN Turf Science Top 10 Turf Weeds by former Turfgrass Extension Educator Maggie Reiter
• UMN Turf Science Glyphosate Alternatives by former Turfgrass Extension Educator Maggie Reiter

Spring Lawn Care

This webinar video was created in partnership with the Metropolitan Council and addresses several topics on how to care for your lawn in spring.

Springtime Lawn Care: Waking Up Your Lawn