Eric Watkins

By Gary Deters and Eric Watkins, University of Minnesota

For a golf course superintendent, managing creeping bentgrass/annual bluegrass putting greens on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis is always a challenge. The goal, regardless of turfgrass species, is to manage the turf to be as healthy as possible while the greens are subjected to daily play from golfers. Cultural practices, nutrition, and water management are important to the success of the golf course playability and overall health of the turf.

By Chengyan Yue, Manlin Cui and Eric Watkins, University of Minnesota; and Aaron Patton, Purdue University

There are clear environmental and social benefits to increasing the use of low-input turfgrasses in home landscapes; however, to increase the market share and use of these grasses, it is crucial to understand the factors that influence consumers’ adoption decisions.

Learn more about our latest work! The Low Input Turf project team has published three journal articles on our research.

Learn more about our latest work!  The Low Input Turf project team has written two recent articles.

Learn more about our latest work!  The Low Input Turf project team has written two recent articles and led a webinar.

Recently, a team of researchers working on our grant have published an exhaustive scientific review of the fine fescue turf species. This review clearly documents differences in growth, production, establishment, management, utilization, pest tolerance, and stress tolerance of the fine fescue taxa.

By Eric Watkins and Yinjie Qiu, University of Minnesota

Fine fescue research has progressed rapidly in recent years, spurred by greater interest in low-input turf and the availability of funding for improving these grasses. While giving talks to various groups about lawn grasses for Minnesota, we often follow the introduction of fine fescues with a refrain similar to “they all look very similar”: translation “don’t ask me how to tell the fine fescues apart!”.

By Chengyan Yue, Yufeng Lai and Eric Watkins; University of Minnesota

In the past decades, plant breeders have developed turfgrasses that exhibit low-input characteristics such as drought tolerance and reduced nitrogen requirements. Although previous studies document the relative strengths and comparable advantages of low-input turfgrass species, little is known about consumers’ preferences for turfgrass attributes. Our team has been working to fill this knowledge gap.

By Kristine Moncada, University of Minnesota

We are happy to announce that from now on, we will be posting twice-monthly articles about our research on fine fescues. The long-term goal of our project is to increase the use of well-adapted fine fescue turfgrass cultivars in sustainable landscapes.