When it comes to late-season fertility, warm-season grass has different needs than cool-season grass because of its unique growth habits and nutrient requirements.

Collar decline is normally not the result of just one causal agent. Typically, it is the combination of numerous factors that result in lower quality turfgrass on collars than in surrounding areas. The summer months bring higher temperatures and drought stress, making this the period when most collar decline occurs. Let’s look at some causes of collar decline and how you can remedy each one.

Hosting a tournament on your golf course is an exciting honor, but it’s also a labor-intensive process from start to finish. In this blog post, we’ll focus on the “finish” aspect and look at helping your course recover from tournament traffic.

As we approach the fall season, the environment transitions to cooler temperature and different sun angles for less intense heat throughout the afternoon. This is the best time of the year for summer recovery, and this sets the tone for healthier turf in the spring.

“You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." Remember those commercials about oil filters? This same catchphrase can be applied to using Mesotrione at seeding time.

Now’s the time to start planning aeration for your course. Aeration is a critical practice to help your course recover from summer stress, but it also requires some recovery of its own.

Not overseeding—or not overseeding at the proper rate—is one reason why athletic fields fail. Now’s the time to make a game plan to overseed your athletic field this year.

An irrigation audit measures how much and where the system is watering. STMA recommends the “catch can” method to conduct an audit, which involves placing catch cans in a grid pattern on the field. After leaving the system on for a period of time, you measure the water in each catch can and identify discrepancies between different locations on the field.

This time of year, drought stress is a threat to turfgrass on athletic fields. Drought-stressed turf is less tolerant to traffic, weeds, and diseases. Since you can’t control the weather, what can you do to at least alleviate drought stress for your field? After you’ve audited your irrigation system, use it to help lessen the […]

It may be tempting to go for the grass seed with the lowest price tag, but you get what you pay for with seed. Low-quality grass seed has lower germination rates, higher weed content, and other costly problems.

Topdressing is an activity that is commonplace in maintaining turf. Let’s discuss a few questions that frequently come up when considering this common practice.

This time of year, some sports fields are home to a couple of unwanted visitors: nutsedge and goosegrass. 

While some baseball and softball fields continue to host tournaments after the end of spring season, many can reduce maintenance practices for the summer. If your field won’t be in use again until fall, you can implement different midsummer maintenance practices. Your goal should be to keep the field in shape and to do so as efficiently as possible.

We all start the season with the best intentions to make the turf “the best it can be.” Eventually, the season gets underway, the weather becomes extreme, staff shortages wreak havoc, and a well-laid plan starts to unravel. 

The single largest input into our spray tank is the water used to make the application. We often overlook the significance of good water. Sometimes we think, “If it’s good enough to drink, then it's okay for our spray tank.” That may or may not be true!

Pre-emergent herbicides work by forming an impenetrable barrier in the soil during seasons of high weed pressure, which occur when the turf is transitioning into or out of dormancy. 

Moisture management is critical to helping your greens survive summer stress, and a moisture meter is the tool for the job.

The seed harvest for 2022 is in full swing.

Advanced Turf Solutions and Barenbrug have partnered together to create a line of exclusive grass seed products, including blends coated with XCD.

When you are planting your yard or inter-seeding your thin lawn, it is important to use the seed that is right for your environment.

By staying in tune with end-user feedback and being aware of environmental pressures, Barenbrug aims to be the preferred partner of today while simultaneously breeding the varieties of the future.

Even though grass seems to grow around us without much effort, developing improved varieties takes time and effort.

There are many factors that SHOULD be considered when selecting a turfgrass species for a new seeding. Here is a comprehensive list of factors to consider:

As we advance into the tough summer months, DEFENSE becomes the name of the game. We offer some great options to help battle these harsh conditions.  

2022 has certainly been challenging for the lawn care industry, with the double-whammy of extremely high fertilizer costs and limited supply. After a break from the high costs of 2008, global demand has increased. We will have to periodically contend with higher prices and shortages for the foreseeable future.

Advanced Turf Solutions added several product offerings over the past few months. Take a look below at what’s new.

When it comes to mowing height, it’s important to avoid cutting your grass too short or too tall.

Infield testing gives you valuable information about the composition of your field. It tells you the percentages of important components—including sand, silt, and clay—and alerts you to unwanted materials in your mix.

Understanding infield test results allows you to adjust the composition of your field accordingly. Infield test results include an analysis of silt and clay, which we discussed in a recent blog post. Today, we’ll look at the results pertaining to sand. 

It's that time of year again, when growth speeds up, temperatures rise, and we start to get consistent and persistent thunderstorms with humidity. The main summer event is here: peak turfgrass disease season.

Several turfgrass pests thrive in warm, wet conditions. Lack of air, poor drainage, compacted soil, and excessive thatch also contribute to infestations. In this post, we’ll look at three pests to be on the lookout for this summer.

Foliar-Pak Grow-In is our swiss army knife. Initially, Grow-In was developed to offer customers a complete turfgrass establishment program with the use of a single product. But as time passed, we noticed Grow-In was useful for seeding projects as well as achieving incredible results on trees and ornamentals.

Mid-year is a good time to step back and evaluate the state of the industry. This article will explain how things are going in the fertilizer industry, specifically. We’ll discuss raw material costs, labor shortages, and fuel prices, as well as action steps for lawn care operators to mitigate current uncertainties.

Perimeter pest control was not always as attractive as an add-on service for lawn care operators as it is now. A few years back, structural pest control companies mainly offered the service.

With so many species, how do you know when to treat? For the most part, the biggest concern is about annual grubs since they do the most damage to lawns.  

Summer stress takes many forms. With record-breaking temperatures in parts of our geography this week, heat stress is inevitable. In this blog post, we’ll discuss both heat and drought stress and what you can do to manage both.

Like soil testing, infield testing gives you valuable information about the makeup of your field. That information will help you identify and correct any problems proactively. The first step of the process is collecting a sample, which is simple when you follow these steps.

Moving into the heat of the summer, everyone’s looking for that "magic bullet” to help them survive and advance to the fall. While sound agronomic processes are the backbone to success, there are a few tools in the Advanced Turf arsenal that, when used properly, have yielded excellent results. 

For over 30 years, West Virginia was spared the damage armyworms could produce. Then, just like in many other states last summer, they struck. Lawns were devastated overnight, leaving lawn care companies working seven days a week to try and save as many properties as they could. Some yards made it; some didn’t. During this […]

Adjuvants make excellent tank-mix partners for herbicide, insecticide, and fungicide applications on your golf course. Here are a few specific ways to incorporate adjuvants into your program.