The 77th Iowa Turfgrass Conference and Tradeshow took place last week. Conference season is always a great time to enjoy and reconnect with friends and colleagues and become energized for another growing season. This year’s keynote speaker Charles Marshall provided the humor and motivation during his Wednesday morning presentation. Below is a snippet of some of Charles’ work.
Personally, I always enjoy listening to the seminars and watching the presenters. This allows me to brush up on information I may already be familiar with while also thinking about new ways of doing things. The presentation that comes to mind as I type this was by Dr. Brian Horgan from the University of Minnesota. He presented some of his latest research relating to the environmental and economic considerations relating to nitrogen fertilization and soil testing. Traditionally, late fall fertilization has been a popular practice and is thought to stimulate root growth and provide early spring green up. So far Brian’s work is suggesting that late fall fertilization may not be the best time to apply fertilizer from an economic or environmental standpoint. Their work is still ongoing so stay tuned for updates on this matter in the future.
I also had the opportunity to present at the conference. As many of you read in an earlier post, Brett Hetland, CGCS Brooks National Golf Club, and I presented about how to plan and implement integrated pest management. Hopefully, the information we presented will encourage and provide you with the necessary tools to start an IPM program at your facility if you have the desire. As we mentioned during our presentation, golf courses can be successfully blended with the natural environment to preserve natural habitat while providing a community asset. Those of you in the turfgrass industry work directly with nature on a daily basis and you are in a unique position to make a positive impact and IPM can serve as a catalyst for this action. In case you couldn’t make it our presentation can be seen below (without the bravado and wit that Brett and I presented with though).
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I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention two Iowa GCSA members that received impressive honors. Rick Tegtmeier, CGCS Des Moines Golf and Country Club, received the second annual Environmental Stewardship Award, and it was announced that Doug Snook, CGCS Waverly Golf Course will be inducted into the Iowa Golf Hall of Fame. There will be more coverage on these awards later in the week.
Marcus Jones
Graduate Research Assistant
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