There have been some changes in the way we use a plant health product called Proxy. Most of our products come out of the Agriculture industry. This product is used as a growth regulator and specifically to suppress annual bluegrass seed head production. This is very important on putting greens since the production of these seed heads make the greens bumpy for weeks. I have been making two applications in the Spring for years. The change has been to apply one application in the late Fall. I decided to try this with our last spray of the season. When it came time to spray the nursery I decided to skip a few spots to test whether the late season application made a difference. I add a dye to the last spray of the season to keep the greens darker for the Winter. This helps absorb sunlight and heat things up over the off-season. It also made it obvious where we had skipped this last spray.
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| Early Spring |
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| After late March application |
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| Early Spring non-sprayed plot |
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| Different angle of the non-sprayed plot above after second spray |
By again skipping various areas we have a full blown trial going on. With check plots that have neither the November nor March applications "CK", Spring only "SO", Fall only "FO", and Both "B". In university research trials there are usually triplicates, exact size plots and many other strict protocols which I may not have followed but it is still a neat thing to see.
In the Spring application I added iron or Ferrous Sulfate (FeSo4) to again add a little color. This will not last as long as a dye so I have more control of the color of the greens. I skipped a section on most of the greens as a test in addition to the nursery. These skips would then all be Fall only plots. Iron really works to turn grass green as you can see in the skips on 2 and 3 greens pictured here.
Eventually we should see patches of white seed heads. Or at least more seed heads in these areas, but who knows? That is why we do these tests to see how the products we use work here on this property.
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