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Garden Column for the Salisbury Post Darrell Blackwelder January 12, 2006
Home lawn care is big business in North Carolina. I guess you can say that’s an understatement when you notice all the lawn care and maintenance company vehicles in the area. According to the NC Turf Council, the impact of this industry was 4.7 billion in 1999 supplying employing over 35,000 full time jobs. By 2008 this number will expand to over 42,000 jobs. With the Baby Boomers retiring, the industry will continue to grow. I had the chance to attend the NC Turf Conference this week in Winston-Salem. It’s an educational conference that provides those in the industry new information on new products and research. NC State University is very much on the cutting edge of this industry. The university has a network of research plots dotting the entire state as well as on going research at research stations and the university site itself. What was of great interest to me was the intense research on developing new cultivars that will one day produce a beautiful, maintenance free turf. Biotechnology, often associated with the food industry is now a major part of the turf industry. NC State University turf scientists are experimenting with gene splicing of other plant species incorporating traits that may one day give us a turf cultivar that is extremely drought tolerant. The study is also developing plants that are also resistance to foliar diseases, such as brown patch. Turf varieties of the future will use less water and be almost disease free, healthily growing without constant use of fungicides and other pesticides. The turf industry has a few cultivars of fescue that spread by rhizomes or underground roots, a similar growth habit as bermuda grass. However, this fescue cultivar doesn’t spread aggressively as bermuda. However, scientists have now discovered a cultivar of this species that does spreads like bermuda, covering as much lawn area as a foot a year. In addition, turf specialists are researching a drought tolerant bluegrass species that adapts and thriving in the Piedmont climate. Research also indicates that fescue will soon fade as the predominant turf in the Piedmont. Research in establishing warm season turf such as Bermuda cultivars, zoysia, centipede and St. Augustine grass in our area is very promising. Cold hardiness, quick coverage as well as easy maintenance are all characteristics of research cultivars under evaluation. The NC State University turf web site, www.turffiles.ncsu.edu/ is a tremendous source of turf information for both commercial/industry and the home owner. It has over 18,000 pages of information that are updated weekly. Take a few minutes and peruse the site. I think you’ll be impressed.
Darrell Blackwelder is an agricultural agent in charge of horticulture with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service in Rowan County. For archived garden columns or other information, visit the Rowan County Master Gardener web site at www.rowanmastergardener.com , e-mail Darrell_Blackwelder@ncsu.edu
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