Micah Woods
I'm chief scientist at the Asian Turfgrass Center and director of the @paceturf information service. Some current projects include #OM246, #ClipVol, and #MLSN.
Appears in 160 Episodes
Two easy methods to estimate N mineralization under turfgrass
You can expect soil organic matter to be 5% nitrogen, and you can expect from 1 to 4% of that organic nitrogen to mineralize in one year. You can also calculate estima...
Linear relationship between #ClipVol and dry weight
This episode introduces multiple experiments that have demonstrated a link between rapid measurement of clipping volume and the clipping yield. Clipping yield is typic...
Creeping, velvet, and browntop bentgrass seeds with Dr. Leah Brilman
Leah Brilman, Ph.D., is the Director of Product Management & Technical Services for Seed Research by DLF. We discussed velvet bentgrass, creeping bentgrass, and brownt...
Topdressing, mowing height, and education points with Andrew McDaniel
Andrew McDaniel has been watching webinars to get education points, and some of these have been about management of soil organic matter on putting greens. We discussed...
Four things to look at with #OM246 test results
Here are four specific things to look at with total organic material by depth (#OM246) test results. The blog post I discussed is this one: https://www.asianturfgrass....
Golf course water requirement, overseeding, & Zoysia vs. bermudagrass with Dr. Matteo Serena
Matteo Serena is the Senior Manager of Irrigation Research and Services for the USGA. We discussed drip irrigation, growth regulators and soil surfactants, water use, ...
GvX, top six episodes, and turf terminology
I checked the top episodes, discussed turf terminology, and discussed the 2025 GCSAA Outstanding Contribution Award winners Dr. Wendy Gelernter and Dr. Larry Stowell.T...
Summer temperatures, turfgrass, and ΔGP
When the cool-season growth potential (GP) is lower than the warm-season GP, the difference between them (the ΔGP) will be negative. In this episode, I discuss ΔGP and...
Google's NotebookLM & audio summaries of the MLSN, GSS, and Grammar of Greenkeeping projects
I wondered what NotebookLM could do, so I created a couple notebooks. One has the title “Global Soil Survey,” and in that notebook I uploaded articles and documents I’...
Browntop greens, Poa annua suppression, pH, & OM testing with Grant Saunders
Grant Saunders is the course superintendent at Hamilton Golf Club in New Zealand. He has successfully overseen a green species conversion from Poa annua to browntop be...
Using #OM246 test results to get net organic material accumulation rate
When you know the rate at which organic material is accumulating in the rootzone, you can adjust sand topdressing rates with more precision. You can also start to chec...
Tournaments and the "grammar" with T-Jay Creamer
T-Jay Creamer is the golf course superintendent at Olympic View Golf Club in western Canada. He joined me to discuss tournament golf maintenance and the grammar of gre...
My visit to Delaware with Joe Gulotti (The Talking Greenkeeper)
A month ago Joe Gulotti and I walked the fairways and greens of the Montchanin Course at Dupont Country Club. I wrote a blog post about that, and we discussed my visit...
A turf paradox: better turf in soils with lower nutrient content
You can sometimes, perhaps more often than you would think, find soil under good turf to have lower nutrient content than does soil under poor quality turf. In this ep...
Disease, nutrition, and control problems, with Dr. John Dempsey
Independent turfgrass researcher John Dempsey, Ph.D., joined me to discuss evaluating treatment effects and the importance of having a good control. We talked about di...
OM measurements, models, and data analysis with Dr. Henry Qu
Dr. Henry Qu, partner and data scientist at Oxbridge Economics, joined me to talk about data analysis, and statistics, and how to try to learn things in turfgrass scie...
Doing more work to produce better turf with Jon Wall
Jon Wall, golf course superintendent at Shanqin Bay, joined me to discuss doing more work to make grass better, rather than doing less. And also about what I'd want ev...
Heat kills: a 12 point list and thermal death point temperatures for cool-season grass
It's summer in the northern hemisphere, and the two items discussed in this episode provide guidance on managing turf when it has to survive through heat stress.From t...
Explaining MLSN and assessing ball roll on putting greens, with Carl Schimenti
Carl Schimenti from Cornell University joined me to discuss intro to #MLSN explanations vs. using MLSN the way it is designed to be used. We also talked a lot about ba...
Checking phosphorus gradients on putting greens with an upper and lower rootzone sample
Soil P, pH, and salinity are a few things that likely vary by depth in your rootzone. I've started recommending that 20% of putting greens tested be done with a sample...
Spring green-up of cool and warm-season grasses with Maggie Reiter
Maggie Reiter joined me to discuss how the start (and end) of the turfgrass maintenance season might be predicted. When is spring green-up? When does the season end? W...
How many hours until the grass wilts? Predicting soil water content with Dr. Bill Kreuser
Bill Kreuser, Ph.D., president of GreenKeeper, joined me to discuss the new water resource planning tools in GreenKeeper, along with disease risk, PGRs, soil surfactan...
Core sweepers make aeration easier, ball roll after 270 rounds, and estimating N in clippings
I discuss small plot university research with fixed treatments vs. golf course and sports turf maintenance with treatments that vary, and consider which results we sho...
What you should know about soil test P, spring growth, and #TurfSpeedo calculations
I describe what we can learn from looking at five years of Mehlich 3 soil test phosphorus results from golf course putting greens, how to calculate the turfgrass spee...
Putting surface management, the turf speedo (growth ratio), & surprising results with T-Jay Creamer
T-Jay Creamer joined me to discuss bentgrass & Poa annua (bent-Poa) management with a surprisingly low annual N rate, almost no use of PGRs, and no aeration (other tha...
P fertilizer & Poa, the #MLSN time issue, and #ClipVol annual totals
In this episode, I discuss sixteen year old bentgrass greens that have also gone sixteen years without P fertilizer. The greens are also free of Poa annua. Then I dis...
Optimal and practical overseeding windows with Jim Huntoon
Jim Huntoon joined me from Horry-Georgetown Technical College to discuss overseeding and the hows and whys of this common practice on warm-season turf that goes dorman...
Botanical walks, ecoregions, and MLSN for lawns with Maggie Reiter
Maggie Reiter joined me to reminisce about the grasses one can find at the back of the 7th green at Pebble Beach Golf Links, to consider soil test results for lawns, w...
An example of ample light when temperature limits growth
This is a follow-up to the episode last week when I mentioned that I was looking at snow outside, that the light would be ample for growth, but the temperatures were b...
The combination of light (DLI) and temperature (GP)
The growth potential converts air temperature to a 0 to 1 (or 0 to 100%) scale. Of course, there are a lot more things that affect actual growth, including light, nitr...