This past week we pregerminated some bentgrass seed. Pregermination is the process of getting seed
to germinate before you put it into the ground.
There are many different ways to accomplish this, one method is to put
the seed into a burlap sack and dunk it into water with a fish tank aerator so
that the seed does not rot. You then
replace with clean water every 12 hours and after 3-5 days you are now ready to use
the seed. Another method is simply
putting bentgrass seed into some wet sand and put it into a warm room. After several warm days in my office the seed
is ready to be planted. There are many other ways to pregerminate seed, we used
both methods above for pregerminating.
Keep in mind that bentgrass takes 10-25 days to germiante in
IDEAL conditions. Early spring and cold
soil temperatures are not IDEAL for germination of bentgrass. Because peak golf season is just around the
corner we used pregermination to speed up the recovery process on our putting
surfaces.
As you play in the coming days you will notice small amounts
of green sand in areas of the greens that expericanced winterkill. In order to use the pregerminated seed we had
to use green sand as our carrier.
Pregerminated seed is very fragile and needs a carrier like sand to
minimize mortality. Here are the steps
in the seeding process:
Step 1: Mix pregerminated seed with
green sand and put into buckets.
Step 2: Poke small holes into the
winterkill areas with a hand spiker.
Step 3: Take green sand and
pregerminated bentgrass mixture and spread it over the small holes left by the
hand spiker.
Step 4: Level the green sand and
bentgrass mixture with a leveling tool called a levelawn.
Step 5: Roll the putting surface to
achieve seed to soil contact.
Step 6: Apply light and frequent
watering in the days to come.
Most of our winterkill areas are very small and we will try
to move the hole locations to areas away from the winterkill so that we
minimize disturbance on the newly seeded areas.
The areas that have green sand are smooth and should not be much of a disturbance. We are sorry for the incovnience but this
will help get our greens healed in sooner, despite the late spring.