From the desk of GCM

UCR suspends lab diagnostic services

The turfgrass disease diagnostic lab at the University of California-Riverside is suspending its diagnostic services as of March 7, according to an e-mail sent this morning by UC Cooperative Extension specialist Frank Wong, Ph.D.

Over the past few years, the lab has been analyzing approximately 500 samples annually from California and other western states. The lab has not been self-supporting, but has been subsidized by university funding, cooperative research with chemical companies, outside grants and funding from state GCSAA chapters and The Environmental Institute for Golf. Cuts to the University of California budget and other funding sources have contributed to the decision to suspend diagnostic work at the lab.

In his letter, Wong states that the Riverside group "will try to reorganize under a new business plan to meet the diagnostic lab needs of the industry, and relaunch the service under a different business model." That model may include some price increases.

Wong says the university needs to consider the actual costs of the services that Extension programs provide:  "Any kind of service to the industry must be (financially) self-sustaining."

Behind the scenes at the Honda Classic

This week, the PGA Tour rolls into PGA National Resort and Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., for the annual Honda Classic. If you've been paying attention, you'll remember that GCSAA spent a week at that same spot in February for the annual National Championship and Golf Classic.

While we were in town, we were able to connect GCSAA TV with Lukus Harvey, the Class A director of agronomy at PGA National and a 10-year member of GCSAA, to chat about his team's preparations for this week's tournament. The results of that conversation are posted above in an Inside the Ropes segment posted late last week to GCSAA TV. Hope you enjoy the video and this week's event in South Florida.

GIS 2011 leftovers: More reviews from the gallery

We've come across a host of other individual reviews and reports from the GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show that we wanted to share with you. You can find our original post containing the first round of these right here:

• Michael Stachowicz, the Class A superintendent at Dedham (Mass.) Country and Polo Club
• Cale Bigelow, Ph.D., Purdue University, via Twitter
• University of Minnesota turf club
• Jason VanBuskirk, the superintendent at Stow Acres CC in Stow, Mass, again via Twitter
• The Grass Group, a turfgrass equipment supplier in the U.K.
• A pair of Tweets from the reigning king of social media in the turf business, Penn State turfgrass professor John Kaminski, Ph.D. — here's part one, and here's part two
• Finally, yet another Tweet, this one from our old pal Bill Brown, CGCS at Hartefield National GC in Avondale, Pa.

MVT deadline extended until this Friday

If you've been looking for a way to recognize all the hard work and effort put forth by your golf course's equipment technician but never knew the right way to do that, I've got good news for you — GCM's Most Valuable Technician Award, presented in partnership with Foley United, can do that job for you.

And if you've been meaning to nominate your equipment tech for that coveted honor but have been kicking yourself for missing this year's deadline, I've got even more good news for you — we've extended the deadline for nominations until this Friday, Feb. 25.

In order to join last year's winner, Ramon Salas of Azusa Greens Country Club in Azusa, Calif., on this exclusive list of equipment technicians, nominees will be judged by a panel of industry experts in a host of areas crucial to the job of a golf course equipment technician. But the spoils are well worth it — a $2,500 cash prize, the adulation of friends and family alike and, of course, being featured in The Insider: Shop column in the June issue of GCM.

Again, nominations close this Friday, Feb. 25. You can go here for more information or to submit your nomination.

Get your questions in for GCSAA's new CEO

For the sake of expediency, I won't completely repeat my post from last week that announced our intention to allow you, the loyal readers of GCM, to craft the questions that we'll ask new GCSAA CEO Rhett Evans as a part of a Q&A we're putting together for the April issue of the magazine. But I will remind you that we need your questions by the end of business this Friday, Feb. 25.

Plenty of means for you to submit those questions — by comment to any of the related posts on this blog, as a direct message to GCM's Twitter account, as a comment to related status updates on GCSAA's Facebook page, or even by going old school and just sending me an e-mail. So if there is anything you've been dying to ask GCSAA's top man, here's your opportunity.

GIS 2011 leftovers: Reviews from the gallery

As we wind down our coverage of last week's GCSAA Education Conference and Golf Industry Show in Orlando, here are a few recaps from attendees who have shared their experiences on their own websites or blogs;

• David Phipps, the Class A superintendent at Stone Creek GC in Oregon City, Ore.
• Chris Tritabaugh, the Class A superintendent at Northland CC in Duluth, Minn.
• Eric Von Hofen, the Class A superintendent at Riviera CC in Miami
• Mark Luckhardt with Turfhugger.com

If you know of other industry professionals who have done the same, let us know so we can add them to the list.

PACE Turf's Top 10+ monitoring tools

PACE Turf is well known for providing sound agronomic advice, and at their Answers on the Hour session on the GIS trade show floor, they gave up some of the tricks of the trade -- a list of their top 10 monitoring tools. Their top 10 was closer to 15, but the list is a product of PACE Turf's years of helping golf course superintendents solve turf puzzles and problems. 

No. 1 in the top 10 (no, we're not going backward like Letterman) is a plastic shoebox priced at approximately $1.79. The PACE duo (aka Wendy and Larry) suggest using plastic shoeboxes (www.container.com) for irrigation audits. The boxes are less expensive than regular catch cans and collect water from a larger area. Just collect the water and pour it into a graduated cylinder. Add a moist paper towel and a turf sample to the box, put a lid on it for 24 hours and you've got an incubation chamber. They also come in handy for storing shoes.

2. A golf flag will indicate whether a green has good air movement or no air movement. For a more precise measurement, the Turbo Meter 271 from Davis Instruments (www.davisnet.com) will accurately and electronically measure wind speed.

3. A Seiko DM-50 metronome (www.amazon.com) will help a technician making a spray application maintain that natural sense of rhythm and keep a constant pace. There is no additional cost if you borrow the metronome from the music student in your family.

4. An inexpensive way to measure water and soil pH -- or the acidity of your saliva -- is to buy a small container of pHydrion pH paper (www.amazon.com).

5-7. Three handy itemsThe Ben Meadows Co. (www.benmeadows.com) -- and other companies. One is a hand lens on a lanyard for magnifying insect and plant parts and fungal structures. Be sure to hold the lens close to your eye and move the item you are looking at closer and farther away until it is in focus -- move the item and not the lens. Ben Meadows also sells the 6-inch Reotemp soil thermometer. You might also be interested in an infrared thermometer to measure the temperature of the turf canopy so you can be aware of impending heat stress.

For many more tips on monitoring tools, go to www.paceturf.org.

Your chance to quiz GCSAA's new CEO is here!

So, GCSAA has a new CEO, Rhett Evans (pictured to the left). You probably already knew that. But what you probably didn't know is that GCM is going to give you the opportunity to grill him on exactly what he plans to do now that he has the association's top job.

As a part of the magazine's coverage of the new CEO hire, we'll be publishing a Q&A with Evans in the April issue of GCM. And instead of having the "Q" part of that equation provided by some stuffy editorial type tucked away in an office in Lawrence, Kan., we're going to pass that duty on to you and allow GCM readers to provide the questions for this feature, utilizing the family of GCSAA-affiliated social media tools to accomplish that task.

Here's how it's going to work: Between now and the end of buisness next Friday, Feb. 25, we'll be accepting suggested questions for Evans via this blog, the GCM Twitter account (@GCM_Magazine), GCSAA's Facebook page and the related GCSAA account on Twitter (@GCSAA). Your questions can be left as a comment to this post on the blog (or the related reminder posts to come next week), as a comment to similar posts you'll find on the GCSAA Facebook page or as a direct message to either GCM or GCSAA on Twitter. Heck, you can even go the "old-fashioned" route and e-mail me directly.

GIS 2011 leftovers: Session snippets

Sitting in on several education sessions at the 2011 GCSAA Education Conference, I began to pick up on a concept that I think you'll be hearing a lot more about in the months and years to come: precision turf management (PTM).

PTM goes way beyond best management practices using the industry's most advanced technologies to provide a golf course manager with detailed, site-specific information to apply water "only where needed, only when needed, and only the amount needed," according to the University of Georgia's Robert Carrow, Ph.D. Carrow was one of four presenters at Monday's "What the Tech? Technology Solutions for Your Turf" session.

Carrow and Toro have been developing  sensor technology in a mobile, pull-behind platform that is capable of spatially mapping key plant and soil attributes in a high-density grid. The platform utilizes GPS, GIS, reflectance sensing and penetration resistance (possibly more; my pen couldn't keep up) to measure volumetric water content in the soil's top 4 inches every 8 feet under "drier" field conditions rather than at field capacity.

GIS 2011 leftovers: BASF's Media Thousandaire

 

Among the many silly things I get the chance to do at an event like last week's Golf Industry Show is the one shown in the video above. I was among a group of industry trade-magazine editors who were invited to participate in BASF's Media Thousandaire for charity, a take-off on the popular "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" television game show.

The company has done these sorts of things for the past several years, and in all honesty, they're good, clean fun and BASF deserves mad props for the contributions they make to each of our respective charities. Although I'm still ticked I missed the question that knocked me out of the competition, I'm extremely grateful to the company for their donation to my charity of choice, the American Diabetes Association.

Feel free to post disparaging comments about my knowledge of recent American history or my prematurely graying hair in the comments field below. On both accounts, I deserve it.