STA Feild Day

As you may know, my turf industry class participates in a weekly field trips to local, turf related Establishments. For example if you have read any of my earlier posts you would have read about our trip to Green Horizons sod. Well this past weeks trip was to Mississauga Ontario for the Sports Turf Association Field Day. Upon arrival it seemed to me that it was going to be more of a trades show with many vendors and booths and people selling equipment. However I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a line up of speakers to talk about various subjects related to turf. The first speaker was actually one of our professors, Sean Jordan, who talked about optimising fertility by properly using and calibrating a fertiliser spreader. the main point i took away from his speech was that the spreader is only as useful as the person operating it. I liked this point the best because it can be related to any machine, not just a spreader. The next speaker was another professor from Guelph University and that man was Dr. Eric Lyons. Dr. Lyons talked about different wear patterns on sports turf, and also touched on how sports participation is dropping in young children in Canada. His main point was how to avoid these wear patterns simply by communicating other ideas on how to use fields for drill, events ect... with the coach or coordinator of the event. He made a good suggestion and i found him to be quite entertaining. Our finale speaker was Jeff Fowler from Penn State. His presentation was on 8 steps to managing a better sports field. The steps were: Soil Testing, Lime and Fertilising, Aeration, Over seeding, Topdressing, Transition Areas, Mowing, Playing surface. He also added a 9th step which was communication. Jeff went into good detail on all of his steps, mostly tieing in with baseball fields, but his presentation held good knowledge that can be used for all types of turf situations. He was also very funny and did not have a hard time holding every ones attention. When Jeff was done speaking we were all treated to an amazing pulled pork and chicken lunch, it was a really nice way to end the seminar. After we had finished eating we got to walk around and talk to some of the vendors, such as Toro, Green Horizons and RainBird. I really enjoyed that part because I got to meet new people and learn a little bit more about some of the new equipment that is out there. In the end it was a great experience and a nice day away from campus.

Joe Atkinson

(Above) My name tag for the day
(Below) Jeff Fowler, Talking baseball diamonds