Winter Overseed Trials: A 5-year Summary Of Best Overseeded Grasses
A.E. Dudeck
University of Florida, Gainesville
Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
Note: Published in Florida Turf Digest 15(5):12-13. 1998
Throughout the southern United States, golf courses, sports turfs, and some home lawns are overseeded annually with cool-season turfgrasses during winter months. This practice provides a live, green, turf ground cover, which improves playing surfaces when bermudagrass or other warm-season turfgrasses are not actively growing. Turfgrass breeders and seed producers continue to develop new grasses resulting in numerous cool-season grasses for overseed purposes. In addition to new cultivars, seed producers annually formulate new grass mixtures and blends. Timely trials are needed to evaluated performance and to provide information to potential users of overseed grasses. We have been conducting overseed trials under golf course fairway and putting green conditions at Gainesville, FL over the past 12 years The purpose of these studies is to evaluate the suitability of selected cool-season turfgrass species, cultivars, mixtures, and/or blends for overseed purposes in Florida. Summarized in Table 1 is a listing of those cool-season grasses out of a total of 210 that produced best turf quality in our tests covering only the last five years from 1992-1997. The summary table is organized by cultivar, species or mixture of cultivars, and by golf course management practice. The complete report of our 1997-1998 study may be obtained in its entirety from our Florida Turfgrass Home Page at http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/turf.
Table 1.
Listed in alphabetical order is a summary of those cool-season grasses
having best turf quality under golf course management conditions
during their respective years of test from 1991 to 1997 at Gainesville,
FL.
| Test Year | Entries | Cultivar | Species | Fairway Management |
Green Management |
| 1997-1998 | 43 | Atlantis/Fuzzy/Imagine/Lynx | Mix | - | + |
| Catalina/Winterplay | Mix | - | + | ||
| DW 42 | CBl | + | + | ||
| DW 184 | CBl | + | + | ||
| DW 208 | CBl | + | - | ||
| Power/Stardust | Mix | + | + | ||
| 1996-1997 | 37 | Academy | PR | + | - |
| BARUSA Pt4 | RB | - | + | ||
| Citation III/Winterplay | Mix | + | + | ||
| Gator II | PR | + | - | ||
| HWY | PR | + | - | ||
| Image/Lynx/Pegasus | PR | + | - | ||
| LRFB7 | PR | + | - | ||
| MB45 | PR | + | - | ||
| Plaisir | PR | + | - | ||
| Premier II | PR | + | - | ||
| Resort | PR | + | - | ||
| Sabre II/AT90163 | Mix | - | + | ||
| 1995-1996 | 30 | Firstcut | Mix | - | + |
| LRF-B7E | PR | + | - | ||
| LRF-C7 | PR | + | - | ||
| Manhattan II | PR | + | - | ||
| Omega III | PR | + | - | ||
| Premier III | PR | + | - | ||
| PT 1-93 | RB | - | + | ||
| Snowbird | RB | - | + | ||
| Sunrise Primo Elite | PR | + | - | ||
| Turfstar Premium | PR | + | - | ||
| 1994-1995 | 29 | Bright-star/Winterplay | Mix | + | + |
| Divine | PR | + | - | ||
| Marvelgreen Supreme | PR | + | - | ||
| Medalist 8 | PR | + | - | ||
| Palmer II | PR | + | - | ||
| Penncross | CB | - | + | ||
| Pleasure+ | PR | + | - | ||
| Pro-Am | RB | - | + | ||
| ProCup | CB | - | + | ||
| PT-GH-92 | RB | - | + | ||
| Sunrise Primo | PR | + | - | ||
| TMI-EXFLP94 | PR | + | - | ||
| Top Hat | PR | + | - | ||
| Winterplay | RB | - | + | ||
| Winterplay/Seaside | Mix | - | + | ||
| 1993-1994 | 29 | Alliance Blend | PR | + | - |
| Colt | RB | + | + | ||
| Cypress | RB | + | + | ||
| Danish Common | RB | + | + | ||
| LPT-CT | RB | + | + | ||
| LPT-HWY | RB | + | + | ||
| MB1-1 | PR | + | - | ||
| PT-GH-89 C11 | RB | + | + | ||
| PT-GH-92 | RB | + | + | ||
| TS-2 | Mix | + | + | ||
| Winterplay | RB | + | + | ||
| 1992-1993 | 33 | Alliance Blend | PR | + | + |
| CBS | PR | + | + | ||
| Club Choice | PR | + | - | ||
| Cypress | RB | - | + | ||
| Florida Green | Mix | - | + | ||
| Futura 2000 | PR | + | - | ||
| Marvelgreen Supreme II | PR | + | + | ||
| Marvelgreen/Laser | Mix | + | + | ||
| Medalist Gold | PR | + | + | ||
| Sonoran | PR | + | - | ||
| Southern Select | PR | + | + | ||
| Sunrise Primo | PR | + | + | ||
| TMI-EXP | PR | + | + | ||
| VIPIIE | PR | + | + | ||
| 89-666 | PR | + | + |
Species identified as CB=creeping bentgrass, CBl=creeping bluegrass, PR=perennial ryegrass, RB=rough bluegrass, and Mix=mixture of two or more species. A + sign indicates best turf quality under given golf course management conditions.