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The Future of Turf09-16-13 | News

The Future of Turf

Marco Schiavon, postdoctoral scientist, evaluates products for turf water conservation at UC Riverside Extension's Turfgrass Field Day on Sept. 12.

Research on how to grow, maintain and irrigate turf will always be beneficial to landscape professionals. That's why about 200 attended UC Riverside Extension's Turfgrass Field Day on Sept. 12.

Plots of turf were set up in the agriculture department for experimentation. In the evaluation of products for turf water conservation, 360-degree sprinklers were set up to irrigate water up to 44 feet away. Catch cans were set up with orange dots, starting at 85 percent evapotranspiration down to 10 percent.

"We tested eight different products for visual ratings of color, canopy temperatures and soil," said Marco Schiavon, UC Riverside Extension postdoctoral scientist. "We found that below 55 percent ET, there was a drastic change in turf quality."

Bernd Leinauer, New Mexico St. University turfgrass specialist, said that subsurface irrigation was a valid alternative to sprinkler irrigation, which was often times inefficient.

"Both sprinklers and subsurface could irrigate tall fescues, using about the same amount of water," said Leinauer. "However, the problem with these experiments is that they don't replicate the real world and not all plots are perfect rectangles. Over the course off four to five years our experiments show that subsurface is more effective for turf than sprinklers."

In another seminar Dennis Pittinger and Don Merhaut discussed the effectiveness of water conserving groundcovers and buffalograss for landscapes.

"A lot of people make the assumption that it's always better to use native plant species for groundcovers," said UC Riverside Botany and Plant Sciences' Merhaut. "We found that traditional ground covers can still thrive in this environment. Even after it dried up, buffalograss sprang up after the rain and juniper also performed well."