THE RESEARCH PLAYBOOK

By Eric Watkins, Ph. D.

As a researcher, on one of the first warm days of spring, when snow drifts are reduced and the last few shards of ice remain, I hope to find a few plots that have succumbed to winter’ s ills.“ Is that snow mold damage?”“ Yes, I think that annual bluegrass might have died from our ice treatment!”“ Shoot, that tall fescue looks almost too healthy.” Turfgrass managers, however, seek signs of hope and a smooth transition to spring sports seasons.“ I don’ t think that perennial ryegrass is quite dead yet!”“ That snow mold will be a cinch to rake off in a week or two.”“ We sure dodged a bullet from that January ice sheet.”

As long as there has been managed turfgrass, damage from winter stress has been a problem, and this problem has been difficult to solve. Even with the bounty of technologies and tools available to modern turfgrass scientists, we have been unable to provide effective solutions to reduce winterkill risk on turfgrass surfaces. Of all the things we study in our turfgrass research program at the University of Minnesota, winter stresses are by far the most challenging.

For other stresses, our approach is more straightforward. When our goal is to find creeping bentgrasses that grow well on greens in Minnesota, we simply plant a trial that includes several varieties, and see which one looks best in a few years. There isn’ t much nuance to this process— seed, fertilize, mow, evaluate, repeat. The variety that handles the conditions at our research facility the best will be at the top of the leaderboard, while those that lag will endure the harsh reality of low scores and possibly even lower seed sales.

Unfortunately, investigating winter stress damage of turfgrasses— and finding solutions to prevent damage— is not nearly as easy. Why is this? Does it have to be this way?

Figure 1: This picture was taken on January 27, 2024, during a very mild winter in Minnesota. We were only able to keep an ice encasement field trial going for a week or two. During the winter of 2024-2025, ice at the same location was maintained for 90 days.

WINTER IS DIFFERENT FROM YEAR TO YEAR Anyone living where winter weather is a regular part of life understands all too well the vagaries of the season. One year might bring a cold November that puts all the grass into a nice dormant state followed by deep layers of snow that give their quiet protection to turfgrass surfaces until a timely spring melt starts up, followed almost immediately by

18 SportsField Management | May 2025 sportsfieldmanagementonline. com