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Mississippi Turfgrass Association – Searching for the Right Grass on the Delta’s Edge Solar Farm
MISSISSIPPI TURFGRASS: Barry Stewart, William Stark and Jay McCurdy
It all started with a contest/challenge from Cubico Sustainable Investments. Cubico is a global renewable energy infrastructure company, owning and operating large-scale solar farms. As part of its corporate responsibility program, Cubico created a competition for MSU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) students to design potential agrivoltaic solutions to control vegetation on solar farms with diverse landscapes. William Stark, then a senior Golf and Sports Turf Management major at MSU, led a team of students from Dr. Jay McCurdy’s Turf Weed Management Class in authoring a research proposal that was funded by Cubico. William is now working on this project as part of his master’s degree under the direction of Dr. Barry Stewart. The research will be conducted at the Delta’s Edge Solar Project located in Carroll County near Greenwood, MS.
When completed, the Delta’s Edge site will have a capacity of 100 MW and be the largest solar installation in Mississippi. According to the publication NS Energy, the site will generate enough clean electricity to power 16,400 homes annually. The 652-acre site will be home to approximately 280,000 solar panels.
The focus of the research project will be to select the best grass or mixture of grasses to revegetate the area under the solar panels. This presents a challenge, as the solar panels will produce shade and may also alter how rainfall reaches the ground. However, the site is not totally covered with solar panels, and there is about an eight foot gap between the rows of solar panels. The panels pivot on their stanchions to allow them to follow the sun during the day (Photo 1). So, the grasses used must be able to thrive in full sun and in shade. This is why a mixture of grass species may be superior to a monoculture. The site is next to the Yalobusha River Levee so the grasses must also be tolerant of wet conditions parts of the year and dry conditions in other parts.
For Cubico’s interest the grasses should be low maintenance, as it will be difficult to mow under the panels, and maintenance operations have a potential to damage the panels. The likely mowing height for the site may be about six inches. Grasses that have high fertility requirements also usually have high mowing requirements and may not be well suited for this site.
Some of the grasses being evaluated at Delta’s Edge and our rationale for using them:
Common Carpetgrass (Axonopus fissifolius):
Carpetgrass is a slow-growing, medium green (and sometimes greenish yellow), coarsely textured turfgrass that is adapted to low-maintenance, general-purpose turf. It prefers full sun to moderate shade and performs well in wet, shady, acidic soils where other grasses may not. Carpetgrass looks similar to centipedegrass except that it produces a crabgrass-like seedhead, and centipedegrass has hairs along the edges of the leaves.
When I first came to MSU, and Dr. Goatley took me out to show me some carpetgrass, I thought, “man with a name like carpetgrass this must be one of the best grasses out there.” Then I was told it was a weedy grass at best and often something you wanted to get rid of. Through the years carpetgrass came up here and there. One year at the Golf Course Show Turf Bowl, the centipedegrass samples were actually carpetgrass (this was caught before it was used in the contest). Dr. Gregg Munshaw and Wayne Philley once presented a project to do carpetgrass breeding work to have a low growing native grass for highway right of way. A few years later many homeowners found out that much of their centipedegrass lawns were actually carpetgrass when the Scotts Company changed the active ingredient in Bonus S fertilizer from simazine to metsulfuron. I have encountered some stands of carpetgrass that were well kept and quite attractiv...
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MISSISSIPPI TURFGRASS: Barry Stewart, William Stark and Jay McCurdy
It all started with a contest/challenge from Cubico Sustainable Investments. Cubico is a global renewable energy infrastructure company, owning and operating large-scale solar farms. As part of its corporate responsibility program, Cubico created a competition for MSU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) students to design potential agrivoltaic solutions to control vegetation on solar farms with diverse landscapes. William Stark, then a senior Golf and Sports Turf Management major at MSU, led a team of students from Dr. Jay McCurdy’s Turf Weed Management Class in authoring a research proposal that was funded by Cubico. William is now working on this project as part of his master’s degree under the direction of Dr. Barry Stewart. The research will be conducted at the Delta’s Edge Solar Project located in Carroll County near Greenwood, MS.
When completed, the Delta’s Edge site will have a capacity of 100 MW and be the largest solar installation in Mississippi. According to the publication NS Energy, the site will generate enough clean electricity to power 16,400 homes annually. The 652-acre site will be home to approximately 280,000 solar panels.
The focus of the research project will be to select the best grass or mixture of grasses to revegetate the area under the solar panels. This presents a challenge, as the solar panels will produce shade and may also alter how rainfall reaches the ground. However, the site is not totally covered with solar panels, and there is about an eight foot gap between the rows of solar panels. The panels pivot on their stanchions to allow them to follow the sun during the day (Photo 1). So, the grasses used must be able to thrive in full sun and in shade. This is why a mixture of grass species may be superior to a monoculture. The site is next to the Yalobusha River Levee so the grasses must also be tolerant of wet conditions parts of the year and dry conditions in other parts.
For Cubico’s interest the grasses should be low maintenance, as it will be difficult to mow under the panels, and maintenance operations have a potential to damage the panels. The likely mowing height for the site may be about six inches. Grasses that have high fertility requirements also usually have high mowing requirements and may not be well suited for this site.
Some of the grasses being evaluated at Delta’s Edge and our rationale for using them:
Common Carpetgrass (Axonopus fissifolius):
Carpetgrass is a slow-growing, medium green (and sometimes greenish yellow), coarsely textured turfgrass that is adapted to low-maintenance, general-purpose turf. It prefers full sun to moderate shade and performs well in wet, shady, acidic soils where other grasses may not. Carpetgrass looks similar to centipedegrass except that it produces a crabgrass-like seedhead, and centipedegrass has hairs along the edges of the leaves.
When I first came to MSU, and Dr. Goatley took me out to show me some carpetgrass, I thought, “man with a name like carpetgrass this must be one of the best grasses out there.” Then I was told it was a weedy grass at best and often something you wanted to get rid of. Through the years carpetgrass came up here and there. One year at the Golf Course Show Turf Bowl, the centipedegrass samples were actually carpetgrass (this was caught before it was used in the contest). Dr. Gregg Munshaw and Wayne Philley once presented a project to do carpetgrass breeding work to have a low growing native grass for highway right of way. A few years later many homeowners found out that much of their centipedegrass lawns were actually carpetgrass when the Scotts Company changed the active ingredient in Bonus S fertilizer from simazine to metsulfuron. I have encountered some stands of carpetgrass that were well kept and quite attractiv...