ou know, it’s a funny old world. I refer to a simple thing that can make a complex difference. And what could be simpler than a bowl of ordinary table sugar?
A spoonful of SUGAR? Y
Let me explain. A few weeks ago, in response to a thread posted on the Pitchcare message board about grass colour, my response was to expound to the virtues of this simple bowl of table sugar? No, not to enhance the compatibility of your rice crispies but, indeed, to initiate various responses within the grass plant and introduce a profound effect on its metabolism. But let’s go back to that simple bowl of sugar. Sugars are basic building blocks for plant function. Glucose and fructose are the subtrates for most other carbohydrate fractions in the plant; stick one of each together and you have sucrose - common table sugar or Saccharide!
When a molecule is formed from different sugars it becomes polysaccharide and some of these are starches, which is basically a bunch of glucose stuck together, forming a longer chain resulting in cellulose. But enough of this! I'm a practitioner of turf and my mission in writing this is merely to give you a wee tip which I learned in the early sixties. So, here goes and, as we progress, please forgive momentary visits to biology.
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Coming out of the winter the plant is normally in a bit of a pickle. Let’s face it, frozen for months on end, many pairs of feet crushing frozen tissue. No sun, therefore no photosynthesis, the process that converts solar energy to chemical energy which then drives the synthesis of sugars from carbon dioxide and water. Sugars provide a multiple role in all aspects of plant life including the main respiratory subtrates for the generation of energy and the metabolic intermediates. Sugar is further required for the functioning of protein and lipids. As a consequence of coming out of the winter with a depletion of the sugars and their derivatives, it initiates various responses within your grass and has a profound effect on the metabolism and the energy required to get your first feed in transit around the plant. If this article was based on an academic understanding, or related to the cognitive response of the metabolism of our grass plant, then I would explain to you that sugars are carbohydrates, meaning that they contain the elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and that there is twice as much hydrogen as there is oxygen, and that simple sugars are called mono sugars or mono saccharides, and the type I will advise you to try are hexose sugars having six atoms of carbons. However, as my article is based on good sound practical advice, I won’t!
Method
This can never be an ‘exact science’ and could be determined and influenced by many outside agencies. Location is one of the main non chemical catalysts that can determine so much to the morphological and physiological response behaviour of our grass plant. Incorporate this with soil and air temperatures and we have a make or break response interval to anything that we may do as practitioners. And, as turf practitioners, we can only expect plant aptitude to prognosis with any prescribed method when temperatures are favourable to the intended purpose. Don’t expect results from anything, including sugars, until the soil and air temperatures will support and encourage the plant to react. Then, of course, there is soil type, some being colder than others, and grass type, some being more responsive than others. The list of reasons goes on and on and, therefore, calls for an understanding of environmental and botanical factors before we should even consider interrupting our wee friend, the grass plant.
Here’s the Deal.
Horses for courses - no two courses are the same, so it goes to reason that no two practices are the same! And this is where we experiment, as we can only find the
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