Surrounds and growth regulators

We have been struggling with growing in the Bermuda around greens for a couple of different reasons, one of which includes the higher rates of growth regulators that the new greens require. The new sod around the greens doesn't handle the traffic and growth regulators as well as established grass.

We have been sodding the worst areas - which is turning out really nicely. This picture shows the impact of the growth regulators on the Bermuda grass. The light squares are the overspray of the growth regulators off the greens.

We have started a different spray approach on the greens. We started cutting the sprayer off early so no over spray goes onto the Bermuda. The down side to this is that not all the green gets sprayed, and most of the time we mix that growth regulator with a fungicide. Now with this approach we have to separate the applications into two separate sprays. Not real fun when we are spraying greens by hand. It is a hot, sweaty, dirty, nasty job that we now have an additional time in a two week period, but if it helps bring back these surrounds it will be worth it.

I will follow this post with another pic of Garrison and Mike spraying greens without any spray going into the Bermuda.