Issuu

3rd Quarter 2021

TEXAS TURFGRASS ASSOCIATION

We had a great Summer Conference at Horseshoe Bay! Thank you to all who attended and our great sponsors! Check inside this issue for photos from this special event!

Keeping Texas Green SINCE 1947

Table of Contents

President’s Message - Raymond Miller ……….....……………..………………..4 Executive Director Message - Katie Flowers ………….…………………..……..7 2022 Conference Save the Dates …………………………………...……………..8 Featured Turfgrass Articles Bring Grass To Life …….……………………………………….….………… 11 - 15 Over Half a Century of Providing Quality Sod in Texas………....…..………..16 - 22 2021 Summer Conference Photos…………….……………………..………. 25 - 28 2021 Winter Conference Program ….…………………………...………….. 31 - 43

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President’s Message

Howdy Turfgrass Friends, As we are closing out 2021 and looking forward to 2022, it is natural to review the past year; pandemic, vaccines, labor shortages/wage increases, price increases and supply chain shortages. Most of these issues will unfortunately linger to varied degrees into 2022. Supply chain issue have improved slightly in recent weeks, but experts warn that supplies are not expected to catch up with demand until later in 2022. According to, Texas A&M University’s Dr. Charlie Hall, we should anticipate a good year ahead of us in 2022, but that doesn’t mean businesses should expect a repeat of the historic, pandemic-induced sales booms of 2020 and 2021. Developing relationships with suppliers and customers is critical to working through supply issues. If the Texas Turfgrass Association or I can help you, please let us know. The Summer TTA Conference was a great success with record attendance, new exhibitors, and new family friendly Putt-Putt golf event. Members were clearly ready to get together in-person and network. Thanks for everyone’s support. The Winter TTA Conference at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio is fast approaching. The winter conference committees, advisors, and Katie have put together a great event with strong topics, excellent speakers, and lots of opportunities for networking throughout the Winter Conference. We will have the Sporting Clay Event on Monday December 13th in the afternoon. The Corn Hole Tournament and reception on the tradeshow floor will be held Tuesday evening December 14th. Tradeshow time, breaks and education are all networking opportunities to help meet your 2022 needs.

TTA will be presenting awards for outstanding lawn and landscapes, golf courses and sports fields. Come see what your peers are achieving and look for ideas. It is not too early to start planning your award applications for 2022. TTA will also be electing board members and voting on a proposed change to the regions that will help us maintain a board that best represents the membership in the future. The conferences and the CPTM program afford you opportunities to develop working relationships with key turf researchers and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension turf specialists. These relationships can be critical to helping you solve problems and to

describing the positive environmental and economic impacts of the industry. The TTA is your association and has been working since 1947 (almost 75 years!) to provide quality education and to support turf research. Your involvement with TTA through membership, conference attendance, exhibiting, sponsorship, silent auction, the gun raffle and volunteering for the board helps insure the TTA serves the industry for another 75 years. In closing, TTA membership and conference participation has many benefits beyond just getting your CEUs. There is still time to register for the TTA Winter Conference and Tradeshow. I look forward to seeing you at Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio.

Sincerely, Raymond C. Miller President Texas Turfgrass Association

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2021 Board of Directors

Executive Board

Executive Director Message

This past year, 2021, has been all about preparation for growing Texas Turfgrass Association! What I love is that a Board of Directors can come together in a room and talk passionately about what we can do to grow, change, and encompasses differently the industry. Are we going to hit the mark? Not always. But we do make small jumps in the right direction and always for the benefit for the members and to advance the industry and our education. The Texas Turfgrass Association Board of Directors brainstormed this year on how we can grow and change both the Summer and Winter shows for 2021 and produced two neat ways to peak both family and member interest. We hit a Home Run at the Summer Conference this past July with the Family Friendly Putting Tournament. Kudos to our planning committee for pulling together and for our members for bringing out your families for this fun-filled event. For those of you that missed, TTA Organized a buy- out of the White-Water Putting course at the Horseshoe Bay Resort and with the help of our generous Sponsors and the Horseshoe Bay staff, this event was one for great memories and that needs to be duplicated in subsequent meetings! Families and members gathered for drinks and appetizers first, and then in teams branched off for putting and while keeping score. I personally did not realize how challenging the putting course was until I attempted it after the conference and saw my score compared to the winners at our show. Congratulations to all winners and for everyone who attended! The biggest change to our Winter planning has been the first Gun Raffle Event that was organized by two TTA Board Members, Scott Sipes and Bubba Simons. Through generous support of ten companies, we were able to launch this first ever gun raffle! TTA board members teamed up to sell gun tickets and we have had a blast creating a raffle to help promote interest in the TTA winter show and gain monetary support for the advancement of TTA.

Thank you to all Members, Exhibitors, Sponsors, and my amazing Board of Directors for working, speaking, and emailing me all year long. I look forward to a great year in 2022 and I hope we can keep making slight changes that have big impacts for our Association and education to the industry! Thank you to everyone for being a member and for your support! God Bless! Your Executive Director, Katie Flowers

Featured Turfgrass Article

Chances are that checkoff-funded advertisements have impacted you or your customers’ buying choices in some way or another. From the ever-popular Got Milk? campaign, to Pork, The Other White Meat and Cotton: The Fabric of Our Lives, these campaigns are possible in part because of nationwide checkoffs. The U.S. Sod Checkoff program’s tagline “Bring Grass to Life” could be just as impactful by not only encouraging consumers to bring grass to their lives, but also by bringing our industry’s story to life. A U.S. Sod Checkoff has been discussed at least as far back as 1996, and the idea is nothing new to many other agricultural and specialty crops. There are currently 22 checkoff programs, formally called Research and Promotion programs, that work daily to expand markets, increase consumer demand, fight regulations, and more. The path to a national checkoff is purposefully long with a number of checks and balances to ensure that everyone in the industry is represented fairly and has a chance to provide input. In 2017, representatives from the U.S. Sod Industry began exploring checkoff programs in detail and have spent the last four years developing a potential sod checkoff program for the industry to consider and vote on. A formation committee made up of 14 sod producers from throughout the U.S. wrote and submitted a draft order to the USDA in late 2020 and are now working with the USDA throughout 2021 to bring the checkoff to a nationwide vote no earlier than the spring of 2022.

The goal of any checkoff program is to increase product demand, expand markets, fund consumer and scientific research, and to fight regulations, building codes, local ordinances, and consumer attitudes that do not align with the uses, science, and value behind agricultural products. The proposed U.S. Sod Checkoff program would be the newest addition and would “Bring Grass to Life” by telling the story of natural grass and the many benefits it brings to parks, sports fields, golf courses, lawns, and other urban greenspaces. In this way, it would do exactly what checkoffs are designed to do for all agricultural commodities, which is to increase consumer demand, raise

awareness, fund important scientific and market research, and educate policy makers and the public on the value of natural grass. Dr. Casey Reynolds, Executive Director of Turfgrass Producers International (TPI), has been a powerful voice behind the effort, rallying the industry around the many benefits of an industry-wide checkoff. “The sod checkoff will benefit every aspect of the green industry by increasing the visibility and value of natural grass. It can do this by not only driving preference for natural grass sod with both consumers and customers, but also by uniting the U.S. sod industry to protect and even grow market share in the face of threats from misinformation, building codes that seek to reduce our market, grass bans, and products that compete for our space,” says Dr. Reynolds. Just a snapshot of the many things you can do by uniting an industry through a checkoff include: • Funding research and marketing efforts to drive consumer preference for natural grass in sports fields, urban greenspace, lawns, and other sites • Funding market and scientific research to better understand consumers, improve farming techniques, create new products and technologies, document the many ecosystem services of urban greenspace, and more. • Educate regulators and lawmakers on the value of keeping natural grass a key part of urban ecosystems in parks, sports fields, golf courses, lawns, and other areas. “Many of the leaders in our industry are passionate sod producers who want to preserve the legacy of their farms by protecting and growing their markets for future generations. We have a great product in natural grass that provides countless benefits for athletes, kids, and the environment in urban ecosystems worldwide yet we know there are those who still need to be educated on that”, says Dr. Reynolds. “In just the last 9 months, I have personally been involved in fighting legislative bills in three separate states that in one way or another are all designed to make it illegal to use natural grass.” The proposed assessment rate of 1/10th of one penny square foot of sod sold in the United States places the current estimate of the U.S. Sod Checkoff’s budget at approximately $14 million annually. If passed by a majority vote of U.S. sod farmers, the program will be implemented, managed, and governed by a 13member board of U.S sod producers who are all nominated by fellow sod producers. Continued on next page

Featured Turfgrass Article

Continued from previous page This board would be comprised of 4 sod farmers from northern states, 5 from southern states including Texas, and 4 from transition zone states to ensure uniform representation among the industry. They would invest checkoff dollars in initiatives such as national and consumer marketing collateral, agronomic and consumer research, local promotional or marketing material for growers, customer and regulator education and outreach, or any other item that falls within the scope of Research and Promotion programs. A U.S. Sod Checkoff program could give our industry the voice and resources it needs to address these and other challenges head on. If passed, it would quite literally create the single largest recurring source of natural grass research funds in the world that could fund scientific and academic research on a scale we have yet to see. Not to stop there, it would also create the single largest source of marketing and promotion efforts for natural grass so that we could reach parents, school administrators, city council men and women, and others who decide on the use of sports fields, parks, and other urban greenspace. This is all possible through the power and ability of a Research and Promotion program to unite U.S. sod farmers. What could all this mean for the Texas green industry? Well, by protecting and growing the market for natural grass, you also protect and grow the market for sports field managers, landscapers, golf courses and other associated industries that rely on natural grass. At the end of the day, natural grass lawns, parks, golf courses, and those who manage them provide much more than just a place to play. They provide countless environmental benefits, personal and community well-being, economic value and more. Our industry has a great story to tell, but until now we have lacked the channel to effectively tell it. A U.S. Sod Checkoff could not only explore and write the story of our industry through research and marketing, but it could also be the narrator that tells it along the way. As of September of 2021, a draft proposal that outlines the key points needed for an efficient, successful checkoff program has been written and submitted to the USDA for review. Once approved, it will be published in the U.S. Federal Register for public viewing and commentary prior to a vote of U.S. sod farmers on its passage in the spring of 2022.

Featured Turfgrass Article

Over Half a Century of Providing Quality Sod in Texas Murff Turf Farm has been operating as a sod farm in Crosby, Texas for the past 52 years. The founder, Bill Murff passed away just a few years ago and now his three children, Scott, Lindy and Reneé lead the business forward. Bill Murff was a teacher in the 1960s that got into landscaping during his summer breaks. He found that he kept needing more grass than he could get. He would buy sod from a nearby town but then he ultimately decided he wanted to grow his own grass on the 15 acres of land he owned. So, he founded Murff Turf Farm in 1969. “He planted his first crop and killed it all with chemicals. Then he replanted about 10 acres of sod. He would have his customers come while he was teaching school and cut their own grass with his hand sod cutter,” Lindy Murff said. Then Bill bought 15 more acres of land next door to expand his operations. In 1974 he quit teaching and became a full-time sod farmer. Bill was a very innovative farmer, one who bought land and planted sod continually until he grew the farm business into its now nearly 4,000 acres of turfgrass. Sometimes he would buy land and start growing before irrigation systems were even set up. Lindy said that they have meetings with their farm managers every morning and they have little sayings that Bill used to say at these meetings. Lately, Murff Turf Farms has had a slight dry spell and could really use some rain. “Dad would always say ‘well, we’re one day closer to a rain.’ So every day we don’t get rain, even though it’s a drought, we’re one day closer,” Lindy said. When Lindy was a young teenager working on the farm, he remembers there were many days when they’d be stacking their last pallet of grass of the day and all the kids were getting excited to go play. “And it seemed like dad always would come out and say ‘we need to cut 20 more pallets’ and we’d all be like ‘oh no not 20 more’,” Lindy laughed. “We didn’t understand the importance of selling the grass, we just wanted to get our work done to go swimming or something.” “It’s those little things you know. He always had little sayings,” he continued. “Dad passed away five years ago. He taught us a lot. He taught us how to work. He looked at things fairly simply and we’ve kind of carried that on.” Lindy said they focus on trying to produce a good quality product and get it to the customers. “The more things you add on, I feel like the more things you maybe take

away from the farm.” He said that’s one of the reasons they don’t have an installation department or maintenance department. “Some people can do that and that’s good. It’s just not what we do.” Lindy is the youngest sibling and said he enjoys working with his brother and sister. He said when their dad passed at first they wondered who would be the big boss, but now they just come to a consensus and don’t need a “main” leader. “We have a good working relationship. Sometimes it can be challenging because we have different ideas but overall, we work pretty well together and are able to make group decisions. It’s worked out pretty well.” Scott Murff manages the finances and administration side of the business, Lindy Murff oversees the farming operations and lease acquisitions and their sister Reneé Martin is in charge of sales and the office work pertaining to customers. “When their father passed away these three did an incredible job of taking over and pushing their sod operations forward,” shared Roberto Gurgel, Sod Solutions Executive Director of Research. Lindy said they’re a family business through and through. All three of his children, in addition to grandchildren, operate the business today. Cousin and nephew, Mark Walker and Brad Walker operate the logistics of hauling the majority of the turf the farm sells. “Mark’s work ethic has been a great strength and has helped bolster the success of Murff Turf Farm,” Lindy said. Continued on next page

Featured Turfgrass Article Sod Varieties

Continued from previous page

Lindy explained the turfgrass industry has changed since his dad started the business in the advent of new grasses, such as working with new varieties. With a lot of competition in Texas, sod farms have to keep up with what are the newest and best varieties available to them. “The biggest changes would be the new grasses that are coming out, and the automation of the harvesting equipment,” he said. Currently, Murff Turf grows several turfgrass varieties, including Palmetto ® St. Augustine, EMPIRE® Zoysia, Celebration® Bermudagrass and Innovation™ Zoysiagrass. Murff Turf used to do some golf course supplying but don’t do much anymore. They supplied the turfgrass (Tif 419 Bermuda) outside of the Houston Texans NRG Stadium about 15 years ago. They also supplied turfgrass for the grounds of the Astros Minute Maid Park and Hermann Park Golf Course in Houston. “We don’t really do high-end sports. We do a lot of local Independent School District (ISD) sports fields in the Houston-metro area,” he said. They’ve used Latitude 36® on three high school sports fields in the Houston area and sell a lot of Celebration, but most of it goes to landscapers and homeowners. “Celebration, from a production standpoint, it makes such a good block. It’ll block (hold together) at a very young age and it gets really dense. It holds up great to traffic,” Lindy said. He shared he did something that may have cost him business in the long run but is a solution for the schools he works with. Many of the school’s sports fields that had Tif 419 Bermuda or another common bermuda almost annually would require them to go back and replace the sod between the hash marks, from end zone to end zone, where a lot of the traffic takes place on the field. “Once we started putting in Celebration it kind of went away because the Celebration held up so well to traffic, they don’t have to replace it year over year,” Lindy shared. “They might go four or five years now before they replace it.” He said Celebration’s traffic tolerance stood up to the playing on the field and has caused them to have to do fewer replacements. Continued on page 21

“My personal favorite (turfgrass variety) is EMPIRE. I love the look of it, the feel of it and the uniformity of growth of EMPIRE over fine-bladed zoysias. It’s kind of a nice in-between of St. Augustine or fine-bladed zoysia,” Lindy said. “I’ve put it in at my personal home and I’ve put it in our office yard. Of all the grasses we grow, it’s my favorite.” He also loves the uniform growth pattern of Latitude 36. “As time has gone by, Tif 419 has gotten polluted with off-types or different types of grasses. The genetic purity of the Latitude 36 is really evident when you look across a field. So that’s one thing I really like about Latitude.”

“I like the early spring green-up of Palmetto and it has a little bit smaller blade and finer texture than say Raleigh,” Lindy said. Innovation is new at Murff Turf. Lindy said they like the look so far and have put some of it out at a local golf course pretty close to their farm called The Clubs of Kingwood. “They are liking it. It’s in heavy, dense shade and seems to be performing well. I like the look of it. It seems to have a little bit more uniformity than Emerald Zoysia,” Lindy said. Lindy said they had a chemical application incident recently where they had sprayed a growth promotion product on their Innovation but some RoundUp had been left in the tank on accident due to not being washed out properly. “It almost killed the St. Augustine field and it hurt the Innovation pretty bad for a while, but it’s really recovered well from a light application of RoundUp, which was an accident on our part,” Lindy shared. He thought that spoke a lot on the recovery time of Innovation, a variety he has on reserve for a job next year.

Trials of 2021 Lindy said that during the pandemic last year, they thought they would miss out on a lot of sales but ended up being up about 25% on sales for the year. He shared they made it through with the health and safety of their employees and haven’t had any problems yet. “We were considered an essential industry and fortunately our industry didn’t see a slowdown.” When the winter storms hit their farm in February 2021, Lindy said it was really tough. “I lost pretty much every field that I had freshly harvested. I replanted about 250 acres of sod but that was a late start as I was unable to do that until March. It’s going to be a very challenging year in 2022 because I expect inventory shortages here on our farm and I think around the state,” Lindy said. He estimated another 150 acres was set back in growth due to the storm. Continued on next page

Featured Turfgrass Article

Continued from previous page Murff Turf Farm saw temperatures as low as 13 degrees and stayed below 20 degrees for about 36 hours. Lindy said the last time they had a similar freeze was in the early 1980s when they were much smaller. “We are probably doing 15 times more volume of sales now than we were doing back then. So although it hurt back then, I was in high school then so I didn’t pay much attention to those kinds of things,” he said.

Water Usage One thing that Lindy is very hopeful for is that more homeowners will become educated on the irrigation of their lawns and water usage. As he headed into a water board meeting, he explained the board tends to look at lawns and landscapes as the biggest problem with water usage these days. “In my mind, it’s all about education. I grow hundreds of acres of sod without any irrigation supplement. I am growing it by nature, just by rainfall,” Lindy said. “That’s what I’m trying to focus on with this water board. People with their lawns and landscapes don’t have to water nearly as much.” Lindy said the consumer using more water than they need to puts a negative effect on the perception of the sod industry. He is hopeful that more information about grasses thriving with one watering a week instead of getting water every day would be great for the turfgrass industry and the environment overall. “I know grass doesn’t need nearly as much water as people put into their lawns,” he said. He recommends homeowners in Texas look into Texas A&M’s AgriLife Extension website called WaterMyYard.org and download their app that gives irrigation recommendations based on weather stations located in the different regions of Texas. Lindy, who graduated college in 1993, is in his 30th year working at the farm full time. He is married with three kids. One just started at Texas A&M the other two are high school and junior high. They reside in Crosby, TX. For more information about Murf Turf Farm, visit https://murffturf.com. Sod Solutions has helped successfully develop and release to the market over 20 different turfgrass varieties over the past 27 years including Palmetto and CitraBlue, St. Augustine, EMPIRE and Innovation™ Zoysia and Celebration, Latitude 36 and NorthBridge Bermudagrass. The company is based in the Charleston, SC area. For all media inquiries or for hi-resolution photos, contact the author Cecilia Brown at cecilia@sodsolutions.com. To view this article on Sod Solutions website click here.

Have you ever considered serving on the Board of Directors for the Texas Turfgrass Association? Each year, the Nominating Committee is tasked with finding qualified candidates to serve as a Regional Director. Board members need to be dedicated to advancing our association and the turfgrass industry in Texas. Directors will serve for two years, work on several different committees, and attend three annual board meetings (spring, summer, and winter). If you are interested in serving in this important role for TTA please contact Whitney Milberger or Executive Director, Katie Flowers. All interested candidates will be reviewed by the Nominating Committee Chair based on the following criteria: experience, membership category, region, and prior involvement with TTA. The Nomination Committee will then make their recommendations to the Board of Directors. A final ballot will then be presented to the membership and voted upon during the general session at the upcoming winter conference in December.

Thank you for your consideration and please do not hesitate to contact: Katie Flowers - Executive Director (info@texasturf.com) or Whitney Milberger Nominating Committee Chairman (WMilberger@bgeinc.com) 512-297-8431 Cell

Summer Family Putting Tournament!

Thank you to all our putters and our great sponsors!

Summer Conference Photos

A great event at Horseshoe Bay!

December 14 - 15, 2021 Winter Conference and Trade Show

Texas Turfgrass Association Keeping Texas Green since 1947

Tuesday, December 14th Opening Day and Registration

7 a.m. Conference Registration Indie Foyer

TDA Session for Non Licensed Attendees

TDA Lectures / Hondo Room Dr. Mark Matocha

Texas A&M AgriLife Extension mmatocha@ag.tamu.edu TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE LICENSE EXAMS

8 am – 5 pm When you register for this session, you must pre-register and pay fees for the conference and this session. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension is now charging for Certified Professional Turfgrass this session. When you register for this session, it also Manager includes the fees for the Lecture manuals and Exam: a.m. – 5 p.m. you8will need. The license exams are not at the TTA Conference. Texas DepartRegister online andgiven applications must be in TTAThe office ment of Agriculture within conducts testing a third party testing company, 30 all days priorthrough to conference. PSI Exams.If you would like to schedule the exams you must first register with TDA. You can register at https://licensing.texasagriculture.gov You will pay the exam fee directly to them when you test. If you are a new applicator you will need to take the General test and at least one category test to get a license, usually the Landscape Maintenance.

Tuesday, December 14th

Full Day Exhibitors Trade Show Schedule

11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. GRAND OPENING OF EXHIBITS Independence Ballroom ENJOY LUNCH WHILE YOU VISIT WITH OUR VENDORS

Lunch Sponsors After Education, Join us at 4:45pm for Happy Hour with the Exhibitors! *Cash Bar *Hor d’oeuvres *And a Corn Hole Tournament! Form a 2 Man team and Sign-up NOW! Networking , Prizes and FUN!