Greens Contamination / Encroachment Repair

One of the major issues we are dealing with in the turf industry, particularly in the southeastern united states, is the encroachment of undesirable bermudagrasses into the putting surface.  Modern turgrass management strategies used to provide consistenly fast greens speeds are exacerbating the problem and since there are no selective herbicides to remove an "off-type bermuda" from a bermudagrass greens, we are forced to physically remove the contaminant to resolve the issue.  Many in the industry are trying to find the best way to do this and the USGA wrote an interested article on a repair strategy that we are trying on Oakridge this year. 

The USGA has named this method the "collar plug method," because of the use of aerification plugs as the viable plant material used to grow in the area.  The process includes chemically eradicating the existing off-type using 2 separate herbicide applications.  The dead turf is then physically removed.  In the next step, we aerified the green and pushed the aerification plugs into the voids left from the removed turf at the collar.  The area will be leveled with greens mix sand, rolled and grown in to match the existing greens elevation.  the benefits of this method over traditional sod or sprigs is that the area contains more of a similar organic content to the green, making consistent maintenance easier.  Also, it tends to blend in quicker due to the grain of the grass matching the existing grain of the green.  And the biggest benefit, since you are supplying your own plant material (plugs), is that it's cheap.  The downside of this process is that it takes time, we expect these areas to grow-in over the next 6-8 weeks.  Fortunately for us, due to the nature of the Oakridge restoration, we have time to try this method.  The photo shows the process taking place on Oakridge's greens this week.