The SFMA Conference Education Committee has put together an exciting and informative education program for the 2023 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. Each month, speakers presenting at the conference will be featured. The Featured Speakers of the Month for October are Geoffrey Rinehart, Philip Braselton, Alfie Gardiner, and Matthew Kerns.
Geoffrey Rinehart is a lecturer at the University of Maryland. He will be presenting “Managing Common Insect Pests in Cool-Season Fields.” This presentation will review important steps and principles for integrated pest management as it relates to insect control, and discuss common insect pests of cool-season sports fields including their identification, life cycle, damage symptoms, and control approaches emphasizing cultural and less-toxic approaches.
The learning outcomes for attendees of this presentation:
- To become more familiar with identifying common cool-season sports field insect pests.
- To learn the life cycles of common cool-season insect pests and the field damage symptoms associated with these insect pests.
- To learn management approaches to controlling these pests using IPM principles.
Philip Braselton is the grounds supervisor at St. Andrews School, Alfie Gardiner is the mid-Atlantic plant health specialist at Target-Specialty Products, and Matthew Kerns is a grounds supervisor at The Episcopal Academy. They will be presenting “Turfgrass Paint a Revisited Idea for Turfgrass Recovery.”
Sports field managers are always looking for new ideas to improve turfgrass recovery. Field paint or dye is not a new concept in aiding in plant health. With advances in these two products over the years, have we, as managers, overlooked the potential they have in turfgrass recovery, especially during our slowest growing months? In an exciting new study, the speakers will present their findings from two organizations by using turfgrass paint on cool-season and warm-season grass.
Attendees will learn:
- The benefits of using field paint during the slowest growing times for warm- and cool-season grass (prolonging growing days, turfgrass density, quicker green up and recovery in the spring, etc.).
- A potential alternative to field blankets for organizations that can’t afford or have the time to manage (alternatively adding field paint to turfgrass blanket program).
- Lowering overall nitrogen inputs and the possibility of eliminating an early season nitrogen application altogether.