TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY - When the Aggie football team kicks off against Ole Miss on October 11, Kyle Field will feature new grass, along with a cannon firing.

Tuesday, the Texas A&M System announced it had completed the installation of new grass brought in from North Carolina. During the second home game against Rice on September 13, the two-game-old field began tearing apart, causing safety concerns for players. Heavy rains the night before the game combined with the grass being on the ground at Kyle for a little more than a month were cited as causes for the field's failure.

The new field brought in costs $300,000, and was said to have thicker sod so it will grow together faster. The company, Carolina Green, also has experience with mid-season field replacements.

Once the 2014 season ends, the field will be removed so the next phase of the $450 million redevelopment can continue.

Not only will there be new grass for the remainder of the season, the Corps of Cadets will once again fire a cannon when the Aggies score.

A tradition for years, there were concerns over the cannon being fired within the newly-closed-in stadium. For the first home game against Lamar, a cannon was fired from the practice field, with a live look at the firing shown on screens in Kyle. For the Rice game, no cannon was fired.

Now, officials with A&M believe they can safely fire the cannon from the southeast tower for the remainder of the 2014 season, and will reevaluate things in the off-season as the stadium redevelopment continues.

We are confident that this will provide a good solution during this transitional period, A&M Interim President Mark Hussey said in a statement. I appreciate the diligent efforts of the Offices of the Commandant of the Corps of Cadets and Environmental Health and Safety as well as A&M System officials, who are overseeing the project, for offering a viable and safe solution for helping us to ensure that the tradition of the cannon firing at Kyle Field continues."

Last week, a cannon was raised into the southeast tower and testing was conducted to try and find a solution, though A&M could not offer assurances at that time that the cannon would work in that location.

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Kyle Field, Now with New Grass, Will Also Have Its Cannon Back

Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) September 30, 2014

On September 1st, 2014, Patten Seed Companys new seed plant processed its first batch of grass seed in their facility on the grounds of Patten Seeds Super-Sod farm in Ft. Valley, Georgia.

Patten Seed bought the new Universal Coating Systems equipment to coat, treat, and bag larger 25 and 50 lb. bags of their TifBlair Centipede and Zenith Zoysia grass seed brands. Previously, the seed company had outsourced seed coating to a company in the western part of the US and they had bagged their own grass seed in only smaller 2, 5, 6, and 10 lb. bags.

The opening of this facility now allows Patten Seed to grow, clean, coat, treat, and bag all of their own seed, keeping everything local to the Southeast. This streamlining and centralizing brings efficiency to the process of getting the seed from the farm to the consumer, saves shipping expenses, gives them more control of inputs, and allows for a quicker turn around time.

Patten Seed Company/Super-Sod is a family-run business that employs experts in turf and horticulture. One of their most popular products has been their Soil3 organic compost, delivered in a cubic yard BigYellowBag, which they make partially from composted grass clippings from their sod and seed production. Patten Seed/Super-Sod continues to develop new garden products, foster gardening and landscaping, and always seeks to improve their farming practices, technology, environmental stewardship, and employee knowledge.

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Patten Seed Company Opens New Seed Processing Plant

QUESTION: I was walking through my yard, and my grass has been looking really good, but I started kicking up thousands of these little grayish-white moths or butterflies, and now I'm worried. What are they?

ANSWER: Oh my goodness, they're back. Those bad, bad tropical sod webworms, or perhaps it's one of their hungrier, more temperate cousins.

These things run in cycles that are hard to predict, but up until a few years ago, no one ever talked about sod webworms on this part of the Gulf Coast.

Now, for the past several years, they've been turning up every fall.

It's not those grayish moths with their distinctive long snouts that do the actual damage. It's their rambunctious young'uns, the caterpillars, which will eat grass blades to the ground. They don't eat roots, so the grass will usually recover, but not before it's weakened and the bare spots begin to attract weeds.

If you wait until the grass is visibly damaged, you've waited too late. The damage has been done and you'll just have to wait for it to recover.

But if you resolve to treat when you see the moths flitting about, laying eggs, you can treat these guys easily and safely. Simply get a small bottle of Dipel or Thuricide, which contains a disease that is harmful only to caterpillars.

Do it immediately, because once the caterpillars are large enough to see easily, it will be too late to kill them. They'll be too tough to die, and they'll have already had the fill of your plants.

Instead look for the moths, and start treating every 7 to 10 days as long as you see the moths.

QUESTION: I've been developing a community vegetable garden, and someone thinks we should use garden cloth to control weeds. He said we could just compost on top of that. What do you think?

Excerpt from:
Three annoyances: Sod webworms, weed fabric, Indian hawthorn

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- The planned installation of new turf at Kyle Field has progressed more rapidly than expected and will allow the process to begin on Saturday, Sept. 27.

Carolina Green, assisted by Texas A&M University personnel, hopes to start laying the sod late on Saturday and should have the installation completed by Tuesday, Sept. 30.

The sod is being shipped from North Carolina and will arrive in 24-28, refrigerated semi-trailer trucks.

There will be no public access to the stadium during the installation, but it can be viewed via the Kyle Field webcam at http://www.kylefield.com.

The Texas A&M Football team is planning to practice on the new turf sometime before they depart to play Mississippi State on Oct. 4. The first home game on the new field will be on Oct. 11 versus Ole Miss.

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New Grass installation at Kyle Field Begins Earlier than Expected

A North Carolina-based company will replace Texas A&Ms football field with another natural surface at the cost of $300,000, sources told The Eagle on Thursday.

The move comes after torrential rains last Friday and Saturday when the Bryan-College Station area was inundated with 4.5 inches of rain in less than 24 hours, leading to sloppy conditions in Saturday nights game between Texas A&M and Rice. After the game, which A&M won 38-10, John Sharp, chancellor for the Texas A&M System, led the decision to make a change and bring in the grass from Carolina Green.

After the game, the chancellor asked the staff and the Kyle Field redevelopment committee to look at options, said Steve Moore, the A&M Systems vice chancellor of marketing and communications. He wanted to know how to provide the best competitive playing surface we could going forward and thats what led to this process and the decisions that have been made.

Carolina Greens sod, which is being shipped in on 24 refrigerated trucks, is grown on plastic and will ship with a much thicker sod base than the grass that was installed in early August, meaning it will take less time for it to take a firm hold at Kyle Field. The next home game is Oct. 11 when A&M plays Mississippi. Crews will begin installing the field the week of Sept. 29.

According to Moore, the installation will take about two days, which should give the Aggies ample opportunity to practice on the new surface before their Southeastern Conference home opener.

Aside from the thicker sod base, another reason Carolina Green was chosen is that the company has expertise in replacing fields in-season. Over the past five years, Carolina Green has done in-season replacements for the Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, University of Tennessee, University of Kentucky and University of South Carolina. Just last week, the Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans played on surface that had been installed the week before by Carolina Green.

Moore said there were no discussions about switching to an artificial surface or moving games to other locations, and that university officials, as well as their Kyle Field redevelopment partners Populous and Manhattan-Vaughn Construction, did not originally anticipate any issues.

Populous and Manhattan-Vaughn have done a lot of stadiums and they had a lot of discussion about it, Moore said. There are a lot of different field experts out there. The prescription they used in terms of getting the turf, selecting the turf, putting the turf down and how it was put down was all well vetted. Had it not been for the rain, everyone is confident it would have worked very well.

He added, If you look around at our playing surfaces we have at A&M, whether its at Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park, Ellis Field for soccer or Kyle Field, traditionally weve had great, great turf. The feeling was that we made decisions that were consistent with that and that it was going to be a great surface for us for this year.

At halftime of last weeks game, Rice coach David Bailiff was seen on the sideline shouting with A&M Athletic Director Eric Hyman. However, after the game, Bailiff said he was satisfied the surface was safe enough to continue playing.

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Kyle Field getting new grass after poor field conditions during Rice game

TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY - Those responsible for putting a field into Kyle Field thought they had the right grass for the 2014 season.

A first game, a significant rain storm and a second game later, and Texas A&M has called an audible.

A&M System officials said Thursday they had finalized a deal to bring new turf from North Carolina to replace the North Texas-grown grass that routinely was ripped and uprooted during the Rice game last Saturday.

In confirming the news originally reported by The Eagle, System spokesperson Steve Moore said there had been talks with top officials throughout the week which wrapped up Thursday with the deal to bring grass from the Carolina Green Sod company in Indian Trail, North Carolina, a company that is said to have thicker sod to settle in faster, and a company that has installed major sports fields in the middle of seasons on short notice before.

By the end of the month, the new grass will be trucked across the country and laid down in Kyle. A&M's next home game is October 11 against Ole Miss.

The previous field, grown by Tri-Tex in Tioga, Texas, had been down for just about 30 days before the home schedule began. Aggie Athletics field manager Leo Goertz told News 3 before the first home game against Lamar that the ideal time for a field to be able to properly set and grow together is 60 days, but that conditions had been good leading up to that game. Following the Lamar match-up, Goertz said the field had held up as good as he could have hoped.

Then, the day before the Rice game, 4.26" of rain wer recorded to have fallen at nearby Easterwood Airport, a record for any September 12 recorded. By the second half of Saturday's game, field crews were having to sprint as much as the players across the field to fill and repair holes where the turf kept coming up.

News 3 featured a story on the original grass during its Aggie Gameday pre-game show before the Rice game. Tri-Tex had also provided the turf for Kyle before the 2007 season.

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New Grass Ordered for Kyle Field After Turf Failures During Rice Game

BEDFORD, Mich., Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Officials with a Michigan school said vandals used grass killer to carve the image of male genitals into a football field, causing four games to be canceled.

Bedford Schools Superintendent Mark Kleinhans said landscapers are using sod to repair the estimated $15,000 to $20,000 worth of damage done to the Bedford High School football field by vandals who used grass killer to put a giant image of male genitalia on the field.

Kleinhans said four games have been canceled as a result of the vandalism and officials are hoping the situation will be corrected in time for the upcoming varsity homecoming game.

Police said they are seeking warrants against two teenage suspects accused of carrying out the vandalism with the help of a 50-year-old mother.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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Penis-shaped football field graffiti cancels games

I heard that sod worms are especially bad this year destroying a lot of lawns. Is there a reason its worse this year? And what can be done to get rid of them?

The mild winter, wet spring and warm weather have been prime for many different species of turf insects, said Tony McCammon, area horticulture educator for the University of Idaho extension office. This year, I have seen some of the worst outbreaks in my tenure with the University of Idaho; insects such as of bluegrass billbug, armyworms and sod webworms. Many lawns in the Magic Valley are completely ruined and need to be

replaced.

Idaho ranks first nationally and accounts for 50 percent of U.S. Kentucky bluegrass seed production, reports the UI College of Agricultural and Life

Sciences.

Sod webworms, commonly called lawn moths, are a serious pest. Larvae feed on and particularly damage bluegrass. They feed at night, chewing off leaves and stems just above grass crowns and reside in silken burrows during the day. Adults are typically inactive during the day and fly at night, scattering their eggs into the grass. Eggs hatch in about one week; the first generation larvae feed until midsummer. A second generation occurs during the remainder of summer. Generations may overlap with all stages present by late summer. Damage to lawn is most obvious in spring and fall.

Insects are easy to control chemically, if pesticides are applied in the proper part of their developmental stages. When the damage is found, its already too late. Insectides wont work. Effective monitoring is key to control.

Many of the local nursery and landscape companies offer control options to protect your lawns from pests, McCammon said. For 7-in-10 years, winters are harsh enough to kill most overwintering larvae and adults. So the populations leave little damage, and control measures might not be needed. These insects have many natural enemies include other insects, bacteria and fungi that target them specifically.

Sod webworm moths are easy to identify with their pointy snouts. They are also seen at dusk flying in a zigzag pattern across the top of your lawn. They lay their eggs in late spring and just as the temperatures increase. This causes your lawn to immediately show the signs of stress, and in lawns with high populations of webworms, the lawn can die in large patches, said McCammon.

Larval damage is observed as brown patches up to the size of a baseball. Webworm larvae can feed in an area of 4 to 6 square feet. Brown patches can be punctured with pencil-sized holes as a result of birds searching for the burrows. Another good indicator of fresh webworm larval feeding is the presence of moist, green fecal pellets in the lawn.

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Curious Mind: Stopping Hungry Sod Worms

Albuquerque has sod laid out and some paving work finished at a new landing spot for Balloon Fiesta pilots -- the city hopes to have the park finished by Oct. 4.

On the north side of Vista Del Norte Park -- off Osuna Road -- theres a patch of dirt where grass needs to go. However, its one of the last open spaces south of Balloon Fiesta Park.

A city spokesman said there are about 6 acres of sod that should be available in time for balloonists. The city has spent months preparing the land, hauling in dirt back in June.

The city admits its behind schedule with laying sod, and cites monsoon rains for the delay.

Were optimistic were going to meet that deadline of being ready for Balloon Fiesta, city spokesman Keith Reed said.

The dirt to the east of the park will remain intact, as the city doesnt have the money to develop it. In addition to the sod, crews need to finish installing sprinklers.

The project will cost about $1.3 million. The city needs $1.6 million to complete the projects second phase.

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City hopes to finish landing strip for Balloon Fiesta

Asheville, NC (PRWEB) August 28, 2014

Super-Sod's new product, Drivable Grass, an environmentally friendly, permeable alternative to concrete, will be featured in their booth at the upcoming 2014 Water Education Summit in Asheville, NC, September 8-10. Discussions will include: conserving water locally, climate change, and watershed planning. Super-Sod brings Drivable Grass to the discussion as a beautiful, easy, and durable option for conserving water, reducing runoff, and mitigating Heat Island Effect.

Drivable Grass is a simple solution for water resource management using living material (turfgrass) to capture and process pollutants without giving up the area to unsightly detention basins or filtration ponds. Turfgrass is a natural bio-filter. Storm-water storage is increased and runoff is minimized when turfgrass is used in conjunction with Drivable Grass to filter, collect, and store run-off underground, underneath a Drivable Grass infrastructure that can be designed to have an attractive, modern look and to allow people and vehicles to use the space in a functional way.

The Drivable Grass system is used for storm drains, detention basins, ditches, filtration systems, bio-swale reinforcement, culvert outlets, fire lanes, and parking lot rainwater capture, just to name a few applications.

Landscape professionals, builders, planners, architects, educators, activists, and anyone in the public sphere interested in learning more about water conservation or Drivable Grass can attend the educational event. A link to The Summit's website can be found on Super-Sod's event & lawn tip calendar.

Super-Sod is a family-run business that employs experts in turf and horticulture. One of their most popular products has been their Soil3 organic compost, delivered in a cubic yard BigYellowBag, which they make partially from composted grass clippings from their sod production. Super-Sod continues to develop new garden products, foster gardening and landscaping, and always seeks to improve their farming practices, technology, environmental stewardship, and employee knowledge. Super-Sod Outlets serve Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Florida, and into Alabama, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Original post:
With Drivable Grass in hand, Super-Sod is Sponsoring The 2014 Water Education Summit this September in Asheville, NC