Hot Takes On Turf With Dr. Micah Woods | EP. 54

Thanks for tuning in to the USDA Green Section podcast, your source for all things golf course management. I'm John Petrovsky, host and education manager in the Green Section. In our latest episode, we welcome back Dr. Michael Woods for a wide ranging discussion on some of his favorite topics. We talk about the right way to perform soil nutrient testing and how to use those results to play in your fertilizer program, whereas Zoyja fits in the golf landscape and much more. Hope you enjoy our conversation. Dr. Michael Woods, thanks so much for joining us this evening or this morning over where you're located in Japan. It's always a treat to speak with you and get your insight on turf grass management. Thanks John, I'm so glad to be back on the show. It's good to have you back Dr. Woods and I know our managing director Dr. Matt Pringles saw you up in Ontario and here you are in Japan shortly thereafter. So you're you're logging the frequent fire mileage this spring. Yeah, I've been to Europe. I've been across the Pacific Ocean on two separate trips and I'm going halfway across the Pacific again tomorrow. So yeah, it's a little bit too much flying but this just happens to be a busy season and a particularly busy year for that type of travel. Great, well it sounds like it's off to a good start. Mike, most of our listeners are familiar with your academic background, your research, the Asian turf grass center, your podcast and all of your great content you put out there. You also recently took over the PACE turf turf grass center for Larry and Wendy and I know they received a lifetime achievement award at the recent GCSA show in San Diego. So that was nice to see. But maybe for kind of a different take as an intro, could you tell our listeners a little bit about how Dr. Michael Woods ended up in Thailand? Yeah, that's a good one. How this kid from the Willamette Valley in Oregon ended up living in Southern Thailand. And people ask me how long I've lived there now and it's been 19 years now. So it's been quite a while. The short story is I was a golf course superintendent in Shanghai and I had a chance to take a holiday to Thailand. And that was my first time to really learn anything about the country or have Thai food or get to experience those kind of tropical beaches and stuff like that. And it was like, wow, this is amazing. The people are nice. There's lots of golf courses here. The food is delicious. The nature is wonderful. And so I always really enjoyed it. And I thought, what a great place this is and it happens to be in Southeast Asia. It's the country with the greatest number of golf courses by far. And so I continued going there on holiday as I went to Cornell and got my PhD. And because I was going there on holiday and meeting people in the golf industry, I ended up meeting people who owned golf courses or who built golf courses. And they said, Micah, if you move here, we will help you start a research facility. We will provide the land and you just provide the expertise and run a business on it. But you can get started here with our assistance. And so the geographic location and my affinity for the country just kind of made it a natural place to get started. Very cool. Thanks for filling in that hole there for our listeners. And I've been to Thailand once. We went to Bangkok. My brother and I played golf there. And by far the hottest, most humid round I've ever experienced in my life. Like, fine. You should be nothing on Bangkok. Yeah, you should try playing in the evening under the lights. There's many golf courses with lights and that's a premium tea time to get. And it's a premium price, a premium green fee that you'll pay because you can play when it's cooler. But that's all relative. It's still hot and humid even at night. Yeah, we were young and weren't exactly thinking clearly. So next time I'll take your advice. Now, Dr. Wood, you swung by the USDA booth in San Diego. Hopefully you got to check out our new moisture meter and the GS3 and some of our other tools. Well, it was tough for all the crowds there. My goodness. That was the busiest booth that I saw. So that was good to see. Great. Yeah, it was good to see. And thanks for letting us badger you for a while there with some different things. And I was curious, what was one or two of the favorite things you saw out on the trade show for if you got a chance to poke around? You know, I spent all day Wednesday there. And I had to leave for another engagement later in the week. So I left Wednesday night. So I spent all day Wednesday there. And I have to tell you, John, it was all about meetings. I had meetings just constantly. So I went to a number of booths, but I didn't really get to explore the way that I like to. I love turf grass industry trade shows. And unfortunately, when I'm only there for a day, it was just packed with meetings on the trade show floor. So I had really interesting conversations and met very interesting people, but I have no insight into interesting items that I saw. Well, that's a common story from a lot of folks that go there as a to work, not necessarily as superintendents. Yeah, for the GCSA post conference survey that they sent me, I replied and I said, please make the trade show longer. Please have it for more hours because I want to spend more time there. That's my personal feeling. Although I know if you're stuck at a booth who wants to be there for 10 hours a day for two or three days, but as a participant, as somebody who's visiting there, I want that because there's so much to see and interesting conversations to have and so much to learn. First you're luckily I got to sneak away from the booth between student visits and a couple of other things. And really for me, the highlights, just the dancements and autonomous mowing. And I was wondering, are you seeing more courses in your travels around the world using autonomous mowers? I know here in the States, it's really picked up the last couple of years. Is that a trend you're seeing elsewhere? Yeah, I think especially in Europe, I would like if we would see this as a wave, maybe Europe is at the front of that wave or the crest of that wave. And in the USA, it seems that it's on the upswing of that wave. And in Asia, I haven't seen it so much. I mean, sure the autonomous robotic mowers exist, but there's still a mix of retrofitting some GPS self-driving units onto larger mowers. So at the show, at the turf show in Osaka last October, I saw some of that. And then also Baroness has a robotic mower that can go mowing rough at night on slopes, which is quite useful. And then there's the smaller Roomba type ones or the autonomous robot mowers. I saw one of those in Thailand two or three weeks ago. So you definitely see it, but you don't see the entire facility doing it. Like we see it Dan Mearsman at Philadelphia Cricket Club, which maybe you've talked with him about that. Or in Europe, you know, Yani Leto at her, her solid golf in Finland, I believe that's the club. They've pretty much got the entire course, except for Greens being mowed with the robotic mowers. And they're not the only one in Europe that does that. So it certainly seems to be a bit, well, it's something that's coming and people are making great use of it. And there's so many benefits that it just seems that this is a really exciting new technology. Absolutely. Yeah, you're correct. Europe was for a front in this movement. And I know Irwan LeCoke at Winston Golf was one of the first to use them. Bear knee up in Iceland. I'm just curious that it hasn't really picked up yet in Asia. Yeah, I keep in mind Asia is really big. And I may not be aware of everywhere, but you certainly don't. People are interested in it. You do see some of the machines, but you don't see the media articles written about it to make me aware of places that I haven't seen in person where I do read about it in certain places in Europe, certain places in North America that are using them. at a very large scale that I don't hear about that in Asia, but it may exist and I just may not be aware of it. Great. Well, I know that hotsu, hotsu, the aeration core, core sweeper has really picked up into the US. I mean, it's people love that machine and right. So, yeah, go ahead. Well, and rightly so, that's a machine that I've been aware of for decades and I keep recommending it and Baroness has a very similar model. So, you've got hotsu, hotsu, makes a core sweeper and Baroness makes a core sweeper. They pick up the cores very cleanly with leaving minimal tire tracks on greens and they pick the cores up faster than the machine can pull them out of the ground and it just seems shocking to me sometimes when I see all the convoluted ways and all the hard work and the number of people involved in having to remove cores when core aeration is done, when people share those type of pictures of what their procedure is to get this done. When I'm like, you could just have one machine and one operator picking these up so quickly. I'm like, why are you not investing in that if you possibly could? Yeah, I got to see it in action in Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club and I was blowing away at the efficiency and the quality. It's like spotless when it's done. So, yeah, if you see any other great equipment out there, let us know here in the state so we can jump on it quicker. Yeah, I think, you know, it's so fun to go to turf shows and learn. I was at the BTME conference in January. That was wonderful. Last week I was at the Canadian Golf Course Management Conference. That was wonderful. And of course, a few weeks ago, or what was that? Early February. I was at the GCSA conference. And, you know, you can learn so much from these and I also often have a chance to go to turf shows in Japan and you can see some special equipment in Japan. I'm very lucky to get to go to these international conferences, but I would encourage people to go to international conferences if you can. You can learn and be exposed to many new things. And I was glad to see some Americans over at the BTME conference. And some were there on their own and then somewhere as part of the Bernhard delegation, which is a wonderful new edition. So, I think you'll be able to apply to go to that maybe every other year. That's certainly a great opportunity to go see machines, manufacturers. What I saw at the BTME conference was trenches. Some of the trenching equipment because drainage is so essential. And some of the trenching equipment I saw there was really nice from an English manufacturer. That's right. I had actually a comment about that later on, but I'll throw it in now. I think it's so important for superintendents to take that time. Whether it's to see new equipment or get to hear from experts like yourself and we just wrapped up to Southeast Regional Conference here in Pinehurst and everyone came up to listen to all our agronomists and Dr. Jordan Booth did a great job kind of leading everything. And it's just so worth while. And as a superintendent, I got tons out of it going to the Atlantic City Show and to the national. So I encourage everyone and it sounds like you do too to take that time. Try to hopefully your course will cover the expenses and just get out there the networking. If you get chance to play golf, it doesn't hurt, but just take the time to get out there and take part in these conferences and trade shows. I concur wholeheartedly. Right. Well, moving on into some agronomic stuff, I want to start off with soil nutrient testing. It's a topic that I just hear a lot about lately. Mostly when somebody puts something out there, people kind of scrutinizing it. So I just saw a great presentation here in the green section from Dr. Doug Soldat and he really put the screws down and somebody's testing methods. And I just wanted to get your take. Micah, what are your basic recommendations? Kind of like the three or four minute version of what superintendents should be doing as far as soil nutrient testing. Then how should they use that information to inform their fertilizer program? Wow, that's a great question. I'll try to stick to that time limit. Basically, people that are managing golf courses are professional turf grass managers. They're more than that. They're managing land and they're managing a resource and they're managing people. But for the turf grass aspect of their job, we consider them professional turf grass managers. If you're professional, you don't want to mess around with deficiency. So I think the default amount of fertilizer to apply and keep in mind, there's 17 essential elements. So you've got nitrogen and you've got phosphorus and you've got potassium and calcium and magnesium and sulfur and so on. You've got all these essential elements for a professional turf grass manager, the default should be to make sure that the grass is supplied with all of them in the quantities that the grass can use it. So basically feeding the grass a balanced diet, we can just ignore the soil and just say we're never going to soil test and we can just supply the grass with all those nutrients in the ratios that they're used by the grass. So that to me is the default. Now where soil testing comes in is making that even more efficient because it's not efficient to apply potassium, if the soil already has enough potassium to meet the grass requirements, in that case, it's more efficient to let the soil supply the potassium and we won't apply it as fertilizer. The same goes for phosphorus. If the soil has enough phosphorus, there's no reason to apply it as fertilizer because the grass roots will just use what's in the soil. So the default should be that we apply everything, not in not in astronomical quantities, we're just applying them in the same dose that the grass is using them. And then we can do a soil test and what the soil test can do if it's done properly is it identifies if the soil is able to supply enough of those nutrients or if it can't. If the soil can't supply it, we don't need to supply that nutrient as fertilizer. If the soil is relatively low in that element, then we would make a recommendation to supply that element as fertilizer. So my recommendation for professional turf grass managers is to do a soil test once a year. And there's some cases where it may make sense to do it twice a year, but in general, I recommend for professionally managed turf surfaces that will be fertilized, do soil testing once per year, and look at how the nutrients change over time in response to what you've done and interpret it using MLSN, which is a method that implements exactly what I've just described. It ensures that the grass is supplied with all the nutrients that it can use and it identifies when the soil can or cannot supply enough of that element. Gotcha. MLSN is minimum levels of sustainable nutrition. Yeah, minimum levels for sustainable nutrition. For rather than of, although it doesn't really matter, it's an initialism of MLSN and whether it's an all or a F in between, it's not included. Well, we don't have any prepositions in our four letters here. So I get mixed up a little bit. That's great. Yeah. Is there anything specifically superintendents should look for in the lab analysis or request from the lab? Like what methodology should the lab be using with the sample? Well, if you're using MLSN in the standard way, then you'd use the MALIC3 soil test extractant at the present time. Although there are some ways to make adjustments if you're using different extraction methods. The problem is it gets a little bit tricky because a lot of people end up using fertilizer companies seem to offer soil testing more often than one might expect and then people do that because it's convenient. But you have to think that fertilizer companies may have a motive to sell fertilizer because that's their business. And so if you're doing your soil testing through a fertilizer company, you may be getting recommendations that have a tendency to involve fertilizer that might not be getting recommended if you are doing the testing through an independent source. There's all kinds of complications once we go beyond what I just explained. So what you can request from the lab, I don't know, I mean, I want to say just like, like, the testing with me and you'll get it done in that very clear way. But there's other people you can do the testing with and I can't service the entire world of golf courses. So I can't do all of that testing. So I don't know. Read my website. How about that? I've written so much at the Asian turf grass website and at the PACE turf website. And so if you're interested in this, just study it a little bit. There's an MLSM page on the PACE turf website. There's an MLSN dedicated page at the ATC website. You can read through fine cheat sheets and find out the kind of questions that you should ask and the way that you should be doing this. Got you. And also if anyone out there would like to reach out to our regional USDA agronomists, they're always more than happy to help too. And you can just look us up online, USDA agronomists and find the right person for your area. That's that's good advice. And it occurred to me. You you mentioned regional agronomists at the same time that I was thinking of one particular thing that I would recommend which was inspired by Stanley Zontech. And I met him who who I think most people know was a legendary agronomist in the Mid Atlantic region. I talked with him at the 2010 US Open. And I asked him about how to get people to understand some things and how to get people to to do things right with soil testing. And he said sometimes instead of telling people what you what they should be doing, sometimes it's useful to tell them the things they should not do. And and I and I thought that was an interesting way to phrase it. And and so I've got a blog post about these it's something like these things about soil testing are misleading and irrelevant. And it's just a list of things that are sort of like red flags that if you hear those kind of things, then you can have a feeling that that however your soil testing is getting done, however, the fertilizer recommendations are getting made. It's it's not in the standard way and you may be getting bamboozled. There's new research. There's there's new research from Rutgers University that shows that any amount in the study that they did on Poa Annua and on creeping bent grass, any amount of potassium increased dollar spot intensity. But let me repeat that. The any amount of added potassium to Poa Annua or bent grass in in this one study that they just recently published from researchers at Rutgers University who know a lot about potassium, a lot about Poa Annua, a lot about bent grass and a lot about dollar spot. Any increase like anything above zero potassium increased dollar spot and they found that for two years. They did that study for two years. No, so so it makes sense to only apply what the grass needs. If the grass doesn't need potassium, then you sure wouldn't want to add extra because it can cause problems and and I think that we will find this is my speculation again, I can't prove it, but I think that we will find as the years go by that balanced nutrition, balanced supply of nutrients to turf grass will lead to healthier grass. You don't really see thatch problems in nature. And you don't really see let's let's consider natural grasslands. We don't see thatch problems and you don't see a lot of disease outbreaks either. When did you go to the park and see a meadow and see it full of I mean other than fairy ring. When did you see it full of of some of the diseases like we'll see on golf course turf. And I think sometimes the intensive management and and applying nutrients in unbalanced ratios to the turf can press could precipitate some problems. You know one one other consideration I had with growth potential which for anyone who doesn't know growth potential is essentially how weather impacts turf growth and if it was 100% it would be like ideal growing conditions turf has reached its full potential for growth. And then if 50% you kind of call like into the growing season stuff like that would zero be like a good predictor or indicator of dead turf could you look at it that way. You could you could look at it this way. There's no potential for growth. Yeah so so if you're if you're not putting traffic on it and there's no growth potential if the GP is zero you're going to be just fine. However if you've got traffic going across turf that's not growing that's where you're going to run into problems and then eventually you'll end up with dead turf. Although in the case of cool season turf it can go to zero on both sides of the optimum temperature so the the good kind of growth potential of zero is when it's cold. If it's cold it just means it's winter and the grass isn't growing because it's too cold for the grass to grow. In that case it would mean dead turf only in the case when you've got so much traffic that you wear the grass away. In the case of having extremely high temperatures like an average air temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that then your growth potential goes to zero on the high end of the temperature scale. In in that case you might have dead cool season grass. Gotcha. Thought that was an interesting take on it and as our Southeast agronomist Chris Hartweger likes to say you know that we have all the recommendations these models that were developed by scientists but at the end of the day every golf course is so many variables so many factors the superintendent you know it's our job to get them the best information possible and then in the end of the day that they have to make the decisions that are best for their course and they're they're one out of a million growing environment that they are managing. That's right you just get these kind of measurements whether it's a soil test or a prediction from growth potential or whatever you you get these and and they're just tools that you use to help hopefully to be helpful in helping guide the decision that you have to make and helping you hopefully make the right decision more times than not. 100 percent. For over 100 years the green section has led the USDA's efforts to support golf courses everywhere. By improving playing conditions and maintenance efficiencies through research, education, course consulting and technology tools. From streamlining putting green data collection using our new GS3 smartball and Deacon Data Management platform to expert guidance from our USDA regional agronomists through our course consulting service. The USDA green section is here to help golf course superintendents achieve their goals. To learn more visit gsshop.usga.org. Now back to our conversation. I'm moving on to some more general topics Dr Woods. One of your top posts from last year on your ATC website was about measuring sand top dressing volume. So why is it important for superintendents to measure and track how much sand they are putting on their putting greens? Well that's a good one. That's important to me. It seems very important because sand applied to a putting surface is inherently disruptive and I think most golfers. I always use this description. I say if sand really made the greens better then it would be a standard practice during tournament week and it's pretty rare I think for sand to get applied like okay it's Wednesday afternoon we've just finished the pro-AM now we're going to go to a sand top dressing application to really spruce these greens up for the tournament nobody does that and the reason is because sand doesn't make the greens better it makes it it it negatively impacts the quality of the ball roll and and I'm sure that with the GS3 smart ball data that that is true for for for people who have used that they will see that when you put sand on the greens it disrupts the the smoothness and true and trunness of the roll and and may have an impact on speed as well and so at the same time if you put no sand on the greens then long term you could have too much organic matter accumulation you could have problems with water movement and you could have surfaces that are too soft and So too much sand would cause a problem, too little sand also causes a problem. Because of that, I think it's really important to measure how much we do apply in order to, in the future, be able to adjust that and to either apply more if we determine that we need to apply more or to be able to apply less. And it's just like fertilizer. I say that the right amount of nutrients is the maximum amount to apply is the right amount. And the minimum amount to apply is also the right amount. So the maximum and minimum end up being the same thing. And we're just trying to find out for nutrients what that is with sand. It's the same. We've got, we don't want to apply any more than we need to apply, but we don't want to apply any less than we need to apply. So it turns out that the maximum and minimum are the same, which is the right amount. And there's no way for us to really hone in on that amount unless we know exactly how much it is. Well, I love that. Very well said, the maximum and the minimum are the same because it's the right amount. Do you have a recommended way to measure that? 24 tons of sand would deliver divided by 18 Marines. So that's how you get started with it. That's a great start. It's a little bit hard to predict the overthrow or to calculate the overthrow of the sand that doesn't actually go on the potting surface. And sometimes that could be like a 5% error, but I've seen places where it's a surprisingly large amount of error, like 20 or 30%, which to me is a little bit higher than than I'd want to tolerate. So certainly as a starting point, you look at how many loads of sand or how many tons of sand delivered got applied over a certain area. That's that's the starting point. But in in the more advanced way and I actually have a video on my YouTube channel about this or a blog post about it, you can lay out some type of flat container or a flat towel or something on the green or on the fairway or any area that's getting top-dressed. And you could spread the sand over it and you know what area that sand has been applied to. And then you go and you weigh that amount of sand. And if you want to, you can also measure the volume of that amount of sand in order to get a quick approximation of your bulk density of the sand, although you probably know that from some lab tests. The USGA also has a video about that. And I link to that in in my blog post also I believe. So they do like a cookie sheet or baking tray and put some income ad in it or or something that from a spinning type top dresser will slow the speed of the sand grain so that they don't exit the the measuring receptacle. And I've had good success measuring this with a towel. So so the towel will hold the sand and and then you weigh it. So when you do that method, you're measuring exactly. And and I think I think that's a good way to do it also. Great. And it just occurred to me going back to the soil testing question. I wanted to ask you is there a time of year or time of the growing season that is the best time in your opinion to take the soil test sample. Yeah, there certainly is. And that time is going to depend on your climate and and really the precipitation patterns that you have. And and and a little bit about the growing of the growing season. You want to take the samples at the time of year when the nutrient levels are at their lowest. So you'd like if possible to be able to identify as many low nutrient levels as possible. And because we're trying to figure out from soil testing, the goal of soil testing is to answer the question, do I need to apply this element as fertilizer or is there enough in the soil. So we don't want to test the soil when the nutrients are elevated. We want to test the soil when the nutrients are as low as possible in most for for most elements that and if you're fertilizing in a reasonable way, which means that you're letting the grass use what's in the soil. So for most places, that's going to be in the autumn at the end of the growing season because the only time that you'll have elevated nutrient levels at the end of the growing season is if you've overfertilized. But I'm not I don't recommend people overfertilize. I recommend you supply the right amount. So if that's the case, the grass is going to deplete the soil of nutrients as it grows through the season. That works for places where it rains. But in places like California, where it doesn't rain and you're adding irrigation water that has some salt in it, that irrigation water tends, well, it does. It inflates the levels of salt in the soil. Many of those salts are nutrients. And so in a place like California where the rains tend to come in the winter, you will have lower nutrient levels in the springtime after the winter rains. So in a Mediterranean type climate, that's how you would do it. You will be more familiar with your local weather patterns and and how the nutrient levels will change at your location than I am. But that's the general idea. You try to test at the same time every year and you try to test at the time when your nutrient levels are at the lowest. Micah, I don't know if anyone who's seen more zoi's or grass and more places around the world in yourself. And we had a great back and forth last conversation after the tape stopped. And I wanted to just kind of get your take again like where do you see zoi's or grass fitting in for golf in the US? I think it will be utilized more and more because it's such a pretty grass and it has some very attractive characteristics. But I see it being rightly used in the southeast and in Florida in places where it rains and there's ample natural precipitation. And I'm a little bit surprised. I think the conversation that we had after the tape stopped rolling in the last episode, I think that was a bit of me talking about how I think it's being overused or over promoted in the western United States. And people are a little bit too credulous about marketing claims when there's to me, there's just absolutely zero evidence and no reason to push zoi's or grass into areas where Bermuda is clearly a superior grass in terms of using less water. Hey, well, I know you felt strongly about that last time. So I just want to give you a chance to put down the record there. So, well said. Yeah, I feel so strongly about it. We can go back to 1997 and there's an article in Dr. Beard's Turf Facts publication. Dr. James Beard and the author of that was a ciphers and beard. And they compared Bermuda grass and zoi's are grass multiple genotypes, multiple varieties of those grasses for water use. And the concluding sentence of that article from 1997 is something like the inferior brooding depth, the inferior drought avoidance, and the inferior drought tolerance of zoi's or grass means that it requires more irrigation than Bermuda grass to remain green and growing. And nothing has changed. And if we look at the research that's happened from 1997 up until today, including just last week, I saw a new article published in 2025 by Marco, Dr. Marco Skiavone from University of Florida. And there is a long list of authors, including plant breeders like Paul Raymer and Bika Chandra, Kevin Chemworthy, Yan Chi Wu from Oklahoma State. And they looked at irrigation frequency requirements for grasses in Florida. And they looked at multiple varieties of zoi's, a multiple of Bermuda, multiple of C-Shorpa spallum. We won't consider C-Shorpa spallum in this. It didn't perform very well. But I looked at the data they presented, there are, there's, I think there's almost 20 tables of data presented in that article. It's an open access article. You can read it. I've just written about it on the PASTER website. If you look at the, so they never go out and state it so clearly. But if you look at the data in the, in that they present in the article, if you look at the zoi'sagrass that was irrigated eight times per month, which is the maximum irrigation treatment compared to no irrigation. If you look at the decline in quality that happens going from irrigated eight times a month to zero times to to no irrigation, just supplying precipitation, just just natural rainfall. And and you compare that same thing with Bermuda. Bermuda that was irrigated eight times a week versus unirrigated. The decline in quality that happens in Zoysia was 373% greater for Zoysia. So Bermuda grass, the quality declined when you cut back the irrigation, when you cut the irrigation from eight times a month to zero, the irrigate the quality declined a little bit. The quality for Zoysia declined 373% greater than it did for Bermuda. So that tells me, and that's research published just in 2025, that tells me like, what are we doing trying to to use Zoysia as a as a grass that's going to use less water than Bermuda. And let's let's be clear about what what this grass can actually do. All right, well, I wanted to give you the chance to put that on the record. So I'm glad you thank you. You teed that one up for me. Thank you. You hit it out of the park, Dr. Woods. Well, or golf. Yeah, I drove, yeah, I hit that green in two. Off of Zoysia tea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Zoysia is a great grass. And I just, I, I think it has, I mean, it's beautiful. I think really the reason why people like Zoysia and is it looks so good, it looks better than Bermuda in that same study that I referenced from Florida, that reason one, the quality of the quality ratings of the Zoysia were higher than the Bermuda. So it's natural that people look at this and say, wow, it's a great grass. It's beautiful. But please like let's seriously like let's, if you want to test which grass uses less water, you need to turn the water down. And I'm afraid that people are not paying attention to the actual water use and, and looking at what the equivalent quality would be one, you turn the water down because when you turn the water down, now the Bermuda grass can outperform the Zoysia and it's not even close. Gotcha. Well, one more agronomic question and then we can wrap up your Dr Woods. Another one of your top posts from last year was about a course you visited in Maryland that you were shocked at how clean their surfaces were in terms of Poe anua. Now, I know down here in the southeast, it's a, it's front and center right now that anybody to add Poe a breakthrough is really struggling. So, can you talk about what you learned there and just briefly anything that might help other super intendents that are struggling with Poe anua? Well, that's a, that is a thousand acres at Deep Creek Lake and Bob Rayleigh's the general manager there now, but he, he was the superintendant initially. And they've got, they've got nine holes there that was built about 16 years ago. He made a single application of phosphorus at one pound of P205 per thousand square feet at planting and hasn't applied phosphorus since. That tends to really favor bankgrass over Poe anua because right at the surface of the root zone, there's just not enough phosphorus for Poe anua with, with its relatively limited root system. There's not enough phosphorus in the soil for it to compete with bankgrass. Additionally, the soil pH there is relatively low. The soil pH is about five. And, and that's the type of condition where Poe anua cannot grow well and creeping bankgrass can still survive. It's, it's not the ideal condition for creeping bankgrass, but it's a condition where creeping bankgrass has a great competitive advantage. Dr. Matt Elmore at Rutgers University is doing some very interesting research about this. And I think, I, I predict that the results of his research are going to shock the industry. I will see if, if it does or, or if the, we don't know the results yet. But if the results come out the way that I think they will, he's going to find that bankgrass can grow and Poe anua cannot grow in certain types of chemical conditions in the, in the soil, which specifically is related to soil pH and, and, and possibly to phosphorus as well. And, and so, I mean, that's really the thing. And, and, and is that relevant in the Southeast? Well, certainly you, you don't want to try to create the optimum conditions for, for growth all the time. You don't always want the pH to be in the range of six to 6.5. You don't always want there to be ample phosphorus in available in the soil. You don't always want to apply a 24, 312 or a triple 15, complete fertilizer to add all the nutrients. You, you want to be very careful and, and try to keep the phosphorus low. And if you have, if you have Poe anua problems, you specifically would want to keep the pH low as well. Sage advice. Thank you for that. And I like to get you out of here. I'll ask maybe a more kind of philosophical question, if you will. Other green section, we have a long history of supporting turfgrass research and Dr. Cole Thompson does a fantastic job leading the program and leading our commitment to USGA commits over two and a half million dollars a year to funding turfgrass research in United States. And I was thinking as someone who sees and you get to, you have a great perspective as someone with a research background and yet you're very close to practitioners all around the world. Do you see any opportunities or any issues? Maybe that's a better way to put it. Do you see any issues facing superintendents that maybe a little more research could take place on that and we could deliver some solutions to golf courses that could really help them. Are we lacking anywhere in the research department? Oh, man, that's a big question. Does anything stand out to you in your travels? Like, man, nobody's really looked at this. Nothing's, nothing's coming to mind right now. But the one thing that I would say is, is there so much good information out there? And it's occurred to me sometimes that maybe what I should focus on is explaining things and communicating things and getting the good information into practice a little bit more. So I'm not saying that we've solved every problem. I'm not saying that and I'm not saying that we don't need new research but it's hard for me to think of any interesting specific things that we really need to work on right now. Of course there are and there will continue to be. But along that same line of thinking, I do feel that there's a great amount of information out there that people are not using. Some people don't know that you can apply growth regulators by growing degree day scheduling, for example. Some people still don't know about a reasonable modern method for soil or for turf grass nutrition or soil nutrient management called MLSN. Some people still don't measure clipping volume. Some people still don't measure the total organic material at the surface of the root zone and use that to adjust their sand top dressing to optimize quality. Some people don't really track the playing surface performance and they're not really optimizing things. So I see a lot of opportunities there to take the scientific research that has already happened and communicate that and translate that and just promote it and share it. Great, well I take that to heart as a member of the green section record team and we'll try to keep doing that for practitioners, get them the information they need from the research. I appreciate a good science communicator and I think that's why a lot of people have a lot of respect for you whether it's turf grass science or medicine or astral physics. There's all this great research going on. But at the end of the day, can you get that into the hands of the people that benefit from it in an efficient and effective manner? So we'll keep doing our best here at the USJ to make that happen. As we get you out of here any last thoughts? I know the masters is coming up. Will you be making your visit down there to Augusta National? Yeah, I just got that plane ticket. So that's another trans-Pacific flight coming up. Yeah, so that's great. That's one of the great weeks of the year and I'm very much looking forward to that. Any plans to visit Oakmont? I know our senior director of the Granami Daran Bavard will be up there with Ellie Fowling and I believe I mean I do not plan to go this year but I do have a beautiful US open Oakmont hat that I I picked up from you at the USJ booth. So thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be wearing that that week. - Great, yeah, those turf grass students that visited our booth really hit that. Those old, my hats are, but I was able to grab one in the scuffle there and save it for you. So, thank you, thank you, I appreciate it. I've already made use of it. I was out collecting some total organic material samples in Bangkok and wore that hat. - Awesome, well, I'm gonna talk to Dr. Thompson Serena and maybe I can tag along on this international turf grass research conference up there in Nagano. - Yeah, that's right. July 12 to 16, 2025, the International Turfgrass Research Conference is gonna be in Japan in a beautiful town in a mountain resort area, which makes the temperatures a little bit cooler than it is at sea level in Japan. And great chance to see some Zoysia in its native habitat. Also see some bankgrass in temperatures. If you go down to sea level, you'll see bankgrass in high temperatures where the growth potential or GP is approaching zero on the wrong side. So, it's gonna be a fascinating conference and some fascinating tours and a great chance to talk with the international, international turf grass science community and just turf grass industry in general. - Awesome, yeah, I know the green section will have at least a couple of representatives there. Maybe they can stick me in a trunk and stow away, get me over there. - You should do it. - You should do it. - Great. Well, for our listeners, you can keep up with Dr. Micah Woods on except at Asian turf grass. And then follow him at all his Asian turf grass center materials online and the paste turf grass center. And can't thank you enough Dr. Woods for taking the time getting up early there in Japan and as we get ready for dinner here and pine herds and it's always a wonderful time when we get to get together and have a chat and really appreciate all your hard work and thanks for taking the time to join us. - Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure. That's a wrap for this edition of the USDA Green Section podcast. A big thanks to multimedia specialist Sean Dodge for editing this episode. Please share, subscribe and rate us on Apple podcast and Spotify and keep up with all our latest content on X and by subscribing to the Green Section record. Our twice a month digital publication covering all things golf course management.