Announcement in Palm Beach Golf Course Superintendents Newsletter, received 13 July 1999.  No takers.

Plots of 12 Ultradwarf bermudagrasses were established beginning in 1993 at University of Florida-Fort Lauderdale.  This was done by Mr. Marcus Prevatte under the supervision of Dr. Monica Elliott, in order to answer golf course superintendents' interest in seeing new trade types such as Quality Dwarf, Classic Dwarf, and PF-11 under comparable management.  On 23 June 1999, John Rowland and I heard that the plots were going to be removed to make room for another experiment, which is why we scrambled to extract a little more data from them.  There is probably nowhere else in the world that these grasses have been grown in replicated comparison under greens height, for such a time.

How do you place six different treatments in 8 foot by 10 foot plots using a walking spray boom that is 4-feet wide?  Carefully.

The south side of each plot was sprayed east-and-west with a 1X treatment, and the north side was left untreated (0X).  The middle of each plot was sprayed north-and south with a 2X treatment, the east side was sprayed with a 4X treatment, and the west side was left untreated (0X).  If you draw that out and add it up, it explains how we got 0X, 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, and 5X in each plot.  It means that gallonage figures are not the same, some plots for example had twice the gallonage of spray mixture per acre as other plots.

Considering the extensive overlaps, the effectively treated plot areas were 2 feet wide and 3 feet long.  That's the area that was accurately treated, with appropriate nozzle overlap, at the given rates.  Plots were carefully measured, before treatment, to make sure everything was square and would fit.   We found we had an extra nearly 12-inch alleyway, which helped accommodate some of the spray overreach.  After treatment, plots were carefully marked with string and painted.  Later, when photographs were taken, a golf cart was positioned in the same relative position for each plot, and the photos taken at the same approximate angle.   By that means the final digital images (after tilting) were in nearly perfect register with one another.  That way, when you surf from frame to frame you see basically the same thing.

Philip Busey, turf@ufl.edu