Chenchen Gu
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 35
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Brushing is a daily practice method for golf course turfgrass maintenance which is done to stand the turfgrass plant prior to being cut. Creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L.) is the primary turfgrass species used on golf course putting greens in temperate regions, but it has a prostrate growth habit. Brushing promotes vertically oriented leaf tissue, which helps the plant tolerate lower mowing heights. Vertical growth promotes higher shoot density, which helps reduce the competitive ability of some weeds. However, different frequency of brushing could lead to variation in the structure of the turfgrass leaves. The mechanical or abrasive nature of brushing potentially can cause physiological injury to the turfgrass plant. The objectives of this research are to evaluate the variation of the green speed as well as to quantify the fluctuations in physiological benefits or stress and to investigate the morphological changes due to brushing creeping bentgrass putting greens throughout the growing season. The two-year experiment was conducted on a standard `Penncross’ creeping bentgrass putting green on native soil located at the Ohio Turfgrass Foundation Research and Education Facility. For the first three months of the first year, the treatments consisted of two different brushing frequencies, brushing once a week and brushing three times a week with brushing unit set at 2.54 mm, compared to an untreated control. However, there wert no significant differences among those treatments. Therefore we adjusted our treatments to brushing three times a week or brushing five times a week with brushing unit set at 0.00 mm and continued the treatments in the second year of research. We found improvement in turf leaf texture and faster green speed with brushing while the variation of photochemical efficiency was not significant until the maximum temperature got lower than 15°C. In 2014 we observed a thinner leaf blade that appeared to have less leaf moisture in the brushed treatment compared to the untreated control. In 2015 we had four treatment which consisted double cut, double cut with brushing three times a week, double cut with brushing five times a week and untreated control which was single cut. We found increased green speed with all brushing treatments and a significant reduction in the amount of cuticle wax where double cutting had the greatest effect (P=0.05) while no physiological stress was indicated by measuring photochemical efficiency.