Author: Cale Bigelow

Fertilizer Calculator Now Available

With the fall fertilization for cool-season turfgrasses just around the corner I wanted to take a moment to make you aware of another interactive tool that is now available. This tool is intended to help you determine your fertilizer needs....

Interactive Turfgrass Identification Tool now available

After about 9 months of development a concept of mine has finally borne fruit. This week we rolled out the interactive, self-guided, online turfgrass identification tool, located at: http://www.agry.purdue.edu/turf/tool/index.html. Now you can probably identify the mystery grass in your lawn from...

Fertilizing Sports Turf

Fertilizing sports turf is critical in order to maintain turf vigor in spite of intense wear and tear. However, too little fertilizer or poorly timed fertilizer are common mistakes on sports complexes. Following are our recommendations for sports field fertilization:...

Phosphorus Fertilization in Turf

Phosphorus (P) fertilization of turf is being questioned nationally for two reasons. Phosphorus fertilization almost never induces a visual turfgrass response and deficiency symptoms are rarely seen, thus calling into question the need for P fertilization. Secondly, higher levels of...

Late May is Good Time to Fertilize Lawns

The annual phase of rapid cool-season shoot growth of cool-season grasses is nearly complete, though it was diminished this year because of the dry and cool weather. It's now time to consider fertilizing your lawn because fertilizer now will not...

Bentgrass Species and Cultivar Selection Impacts Annual Bluegrass Invasion in Renovated Bentgrass Fairways

Along with the warmer spring temperatures two things are certain; crabgrass will eventually germinate and annual bluegrass will profusely flower. For anyone managing bentgrass fairways or considering a bentgrass fairway renovation some of our recent research results will be of...

Buyer Beware: Annual Ryegrass is Not a Persistent Turfgrass Species for Indiana Homelawns

There are many cool-season turfgrasses suitable and adapted to home-lawns in Indiana. They include; Kentucky bluegrass, turf-type tall fescue, fineleaf fescue and to a certain extent even “perennial” ryegrass. Many new lawns are established using seed because it is much...

November Lawn Fertilization

Up until about two weeks ago, autumn 2004 was for the most part a fairly dry season. This means that if you fertilized your cool-season lawn in early September and were unable to regularly irrigate, the nitrogen that was applied...

Bermudagrass for Southern Indiana Athletic Fields

Turf quality on municipal athletic fields in southern Indiana is typically poor due to excessive traffic from football and soccer. But reseeding worn areas with some common grass varieties in late spring or late fall aren’t always successful. This publication explains how bermudagrass can be a potential solution to worn fields in southern Indiana.

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PDF version of Bermudagrass for Southern Indiana Athletic Fields

Rust Revival!

Well it must be September and it must finally be dry because I have seen some serious outbreaks of rust on many perennial ryegrass lawns throughout the area over the past week. Leaf rust has been most noticeable on lawns...

Late-summer Aerification check-List

Although this past growing season across most of Indiana has been cool and moist this is no reason to consider skipping fall core cultivation or aerification. In fact, this abnormal weather pattern is actually more conducive to thatch accumulation since...

Dealing With Flood Damage

Though flooding damage so far this year is not as bad as last year, a number of areas have been hard hit with rainfall the last week (see the photo of Lafayette Municipal Golf Course). We don’t expect damage to...

Time to consider a change…?

We are finally getting near the end of the spring growth flush for our major cool-season lawngrass species like Kentucky bluegrass, ryegrass and tall fescue. With a little help from mother-nature, hopefully mowing will be more manageable from here on...

Localized Dry Spot Returns for 2004

For those of you managing sand-based putting greens you may have noticed some turf areas that don’t seem to be vigorously growing even with the recent heavy rainfalls or regular irrigation (photo). Looking back, April and the early part of...

Dormant Sand Topdressing. Does it help Creeping Bentgrass Spring Green-up?

A research study was initiated at Purdue University to evaluate two sand topdressing products for their ability to enhance creeping bentgrass spring green-up. Treatments were applied at three application rates in the third week of January 2004 to a ‘Crenshaw’...