Today’s batch of burning questions, my smart-aleck answers and the real deal:
Question: I was recently doing a power walk at the Buncombe County Sports Park off Sand Hill School Road. By American standards, the grass on the soccer fields would get a five-star rating. There is not a single broadleaf weed on any field, no crabgrass or clover, and even though the grass is cut short, it is a thick carpet of brilliant green. What’s the formula or secret sauce that the county uses to produce this high quality of turf? Also what type of grass is it?
My answer: I have a lot in common with this reader. I was recently doing a power walk to the refrigerator, and I stopped to admire the beauty of the kitchen linoleum.
Real answer: This is a Buncombe County Park, but the Asheville Buncombe Youth Soccer Association maintains the grass on the soccer fields. Buncombe County spokeswoman Lillian Govus got the information below from Mike Rottjakob, ABYSA’s executive director.
Besides soccer fields, the Sports Park offers picnic areas, disc golf, walking trails, bocce courts, sand volleyball courts, a playground, community garden, edible urban orchard and covered recreation shelter rentals. The county plans some major enhancements over the next two years, including field improvements, additional multipurpose fields, a dog park, and the 2-mile Enka Heritage Trail greenway, according to the county’s website.
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Now, about those soccer fields, which are a thing of beauty.
“The fields are, as the reader proclaimed, in great shape at this time,” Rottjakob said via email. “This is in part because of the reduced pressure during the COVID-19 shutdown, but also because the growing conditions have been excellent this summer. We have had about the perfect amount of rain and have not had to turn on the irrigation system, other than to locate the sprinkler heads so they would not be damaged when running the core aeration machine.”
As far as the grass, it’s fairly unusual. Some local athletic fields feature Bermuda grass, which looks fantastic in the hot weather but then goes brown and dormant during the cool seasons.
“The grass on the fields is ‘Bluemuda,’ a combination of Bermuda, which thrives in the heat, and blue grass, which thrives when the Bermuda goes dormant in the fall and winter,” Rottjakob said. “We added the bluegrass about four years ago, as this combination became a popular solution for sports fields in climates that have shorter growing seasons for Bermuda.”
The grass needs food — i.e. fertilizer — but mowing frequency also plays a key role, Rottjakob said.
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“We cut every-other-day, as often as possible, which forces the Bermuda to grow horizontally rather than vertically,” Rottjakob said. “This allows for the fields to ‘self-repair’ as the Bermuda crawls to cover bare spots and results in a very thick and healthy turf.”
He also tossed some well-deserved laurels to the workers who make this happen.
“If there was a ‘secret ingredient,’ though, it would be the crew of ABYSA employees that care for the fields and really take pride in how well they play,” Rottjakob said.
Question: I am wondering what happened to the geese at Grove Park Inn golf course? There were a dozen on the pond. Then one day I only saw four. Two were laying very low in the distance. Now there are none. Is that something you could find out about?
My answer: Maybe the geese got tired of golfers nabbing too many birdies?
Real answer: This question came in after my July 17 column about 58 geese that had taken up residence at a Fairview business, but then became a nuisance and got gassed by the feds.
It appears the Grove Park’s geese have not met a similar demise.
“The Omni Grove Park Inn does not know what, if anything, happened to the geese,” inn spokeswoman Susan Rotante said via email. “Our grounds team did confirm there have been geese on the golf course the past few months. The inn has not interfered with the flock.”
On a side note, as a somewhat regular player of the Lake Junaluska Golf Course in Haywood County, I can suggest that maybe the geese went out there. And let me tell you, that flock of birds has zero instinct for self-preservation on the fairways.
Or zero pooping etiquette. Pssst … hey geese, not on the greens, please!
This is the opinion of John Boyle. To submit a question, contact him at 232-5847 or jboyle@citizen-times.com
