| Techniques, turf types and machinery.
By Todd Layt
Establishing turf by vegetative means, rather than seed has many advantages, but often people believe seed to be much lower in cost. New machines and techniques have brought the cost of establishing these non seeded varieties of turf via vegetative means to rates that are close to competitive with seed.
Vegetative warm season turf grasses are generally considered far superior to seeded varieties; this is why high profile facilities continue to generally use Couch grasses such as Wintergreen, Santa Anna, and the newer PBR varieties. Seeded Couches, Kikuyu, and Zoysia when bred for seed are first and foremost selected for good seed yield. This means the grass puts a lot of energy into seeding, rather then growing the leaf, stolons and rhizomes. Many vegetative forms are actually bred to have little or no viable seed. Some of the vegetative varieties unfortunately have missed this step in breeding, which is a real shame. A vegetative form that has little or no viable seed is far less likely to cause problems in bushland as a weed.
For example, Kikuyu can seed its head off, and spread quickly across the community. There are now newer forms being breed that rarely if ever form viable seed. Generally the seed self aborts, but even these types can not claim to be 100% sterile, as occasionally under ideal conditions, a rare seed will form. This low amount of seed is not enough to cause environmental problems, and will ensure they remain non invasive.
Look out for a new Kikuyu that rarely produces a seed, called Kenda, and a new Couch with little seed head called Cynomax available early next year through HG turf, and Qualturf.
This is the future of breeding.
The other main benefit of vegetative planting over seeding is the ability to use pre-emergents to stop weeds germinating. I find Ronstar the best at preventing most weeds, and works up to 3 months. Other pre-emergents are available. This is one huge advantage.
Planting turf vegetatively can be done in a few methods. Firstly instant turf is one method. Turf is often less expensive then you think, and a great alternative when the costs of maintaining and growing in the turf from stoloninzing or seeding are calculated. With the high cost of staff, make sure you do your sums correctly. For smaller to moderately sized areas, you will often find instant turf saves money, compared to you growing it yourself. For many sites, with limited maintenance facilities, even larger areas can be more economical from turf.
|
Low cost vegetative planting now has many options, and many machines. There are several types of machines including; row planting machines. These machines break up the turf rolls, slabs, and even big rolls with some planters, and plant stolons and rhizomes in rows into the ground. Most plant in passes 2 metres wide, and can plant tens of thousands of square metres in a day.
Over planting sprigging machines are also available. These take the high quality vegetative turf varieties, and over plant them into cool season turf, or even other varieties of warm season turf. Often the existing variety is sprayed with Round Up first. They have tough spring loaded tynes and coulters for rough conditions, allowing them to over plant existing turf, even when rocks are present. Row Planters cost between $40000 to $55000 depending on the type. Two companies that sell these machines are Saliba Agricultural Equipment (02) 96271840 and Sammut Agricultural Machinery (02) 45796511. These two companies have sold many of these machines to contractors and turf growers that will contract plant for you.
Sammut has a new machine called the Sprig Master that allows you to recycle stolons from stripped fields, and over plant using this chaff. The same machine can still plant from Rolls. This costs about $65000. Other methods of planting large areas include a Plug planter from Sammut, which takes bigger chunks of turf and plants them, being ideal for areas with less irrigation. There is off course the old time solution of rotary hoeing up old turf, loading it into a muck spreader, or some other type of device, and spreading it over the ground. Rotary hoeing it in again helps a lot. This is not as efficient as the professional machines, but watered correctly it does work.
Remember all these methods are only successful with running type grasses. The other final method is to take Viro-Cells, which are pre grown plug cells of warm season turf types, including Empire Zoysia and Palmetto Buffalo, and plant them over larger areas. This is a good method if little water is available for planting.
|
