Feb. 9, 2007

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OVERTON – More than 150 professional managers of landscapes for school districts, city parks and sports fields attended the annual East Texas Turfgrass Conference on Feb. 1.

Managing turfgrass during drought was a common theme of many of the presentations, said Randy Reeves, Texas Cooperative Extension agent for agriculture in Harrison County and one of the event's coordinators.

"We've been in a two-year drought," Reeves said. "Of course 2006 was really bad, and 2005, the year before, was bad. So drought is on everybody's mind."

But the conference was not all about drought, Reeves said.

"Several topics are covered: soil fertility, how fertilizers work in the soil," Reeves said. "We talk about soil structures; we talk about aerification; we talk about basic turf care, diseases, insects and a world of things."

Turfgrass is big business in Texas. In 2001, Texans spent about $6 billion maintaining turfgrass, with about 250,000 full-time employees, according to Dr. Richard Duble, Extension turfgrass specialist.

Today, the total amount spent is estimated to be $7 billion to $8 billion, Duble said.

Writing in "Economic Impact of Turfgrass" Duble notes that home lawns comprise the largest single component of the money spent, more than 50 percent. Single-family household expenditures are usually followed by commercial businesses, golf courses and multi-family households. Public schools are far down the list, according to Duble's report.

With less to spend, schools have to be more efficient at managing their turfgrass, said Cecil Newton, who manages the athletic fields for the Jacksonville School District. Athletic arenas, which see hard use, require close management, and Extension trainings have played a big role in helping him stay proficient in the latest techniques.

"This Extension service which manages this training in turfgrass management is in my opinion excellent," Newton said. "I have learned a lot of cultural practices at these conferences and techniques that we can incorporate into our fields to provide a better playing surface for the athletes. It helps prevent injuries and those kind of things. And offers a beautiful aesthetic environment. ... Fortunately, some of the stuff we learn at these conference gives us the opportunity to incorporate those practices."

One of the program speakers was a departure from the usual programming concentrating on turfgrasses, Reeves said. Daniel Duncum, with the Texas Forest Service, talked about managing landscape trees during drought.

"Some of the problems we been finding in the last few years ... particularly in the yard trees, and the urban/city trees is loss of primary oaks and pines," said Duncum, who is the urban district forester for northeast Texas and based in Longview. " Most of the oaks are being killed by a disease called hypoxylon canker."

The disease occurs primarily in trees that have been stressed, Duncum said. It causes a dark brown discoloration of the sapwood. Drought may be one cause of the stress; construction and the use of fill soil may also trigger the disease. Diagnosis of the disease is usually a death sentence for an oak.

"There's really nothing we can do about that as far as a spray is concerned," Duncum said. "We try to encourage people to keep their trees as healthy as possible. Water when they can; fertilize if they need to."

Drought-induced stress also puts trees at higher risk from insect infestation. In the case of pine trees, the most common drought-associated insect in East Texas is the pine bark beetle. Although it's not a certainty that intervention won't work, a treatment is not a sure cure, Duncum said.

"In a lot of cases you can spray for pine bark beetle, but in a lot cases you're going to be looking at removal (of the tree)," he said.

Often homeowners contribute to a tree-death by poor management during a drought, Duncum said. And the most common drought-time mismanagement practice is fertilization.

"There a lot of folks who feel like they need to fertilize their tree because they are stressed," he said. "And that's true; they are stressed. But what the trees need is water – not fertilization."

Duncum explained that fertilizing a drought-stressed tree stimulates it to step up its metabolism, to "burn more energy to respond to the food you put out there."

And when it burns more energy, it uses more water, and the result is further harm to the tree.

"So for drought times provide the water," he said.