from MSU News Service

9/29/99 - BOZEMAN –If you like working outdoors as well as sports, you may envy the direction in which Jason Lamb is taking his life.

Lamb, a senior at Montana State University-Bozeman, is taking the turf grass option in Plant Sciences. The program is new at MSU. It began shortly before Lamb transferred from the University of Montana last year. The program now has about 20 students specializing in turf management.

Originally from Hinsdale, Lamb worked on a golf course for five years and on collegiate athletic fields before deciding he liked the work enough to study it professionally.

Usually, a degree is a good starting point, and you follow it with experience. Since Lamb already had experience before starting toward a degree, he says, "Now I'm seeing why I was told to do the things I was doing."

He's also getting to see the work from new perspectives.

There's a lot more than mowing if you want a good field of grass, says Lamb. There's all the complexity of working with a living system and the intrigue of diagnosing turf diseases and insect problems. Properly getting grass stands established is one of the things he hadn't experienced before MSU.

"This is my first experience growing a lot of material from seed, and that's a good experience . . . I'm taking Bob Gough's Landscape Management, and a nursery class, because a lot of golf courses are growing their own plants rather than buying their stock."

His experience growing grass from seed came while helping MSU Extension's Horticulturist Bob Gough test several hundred types of grasses that are in the general categories of bent grass, fine fescue and ryegrass. The types of grass are determined by the USDA, which chose MSU as one site for its National Turfgrass Evaluation Program. This program lets people all around the country know which grass varieties do well in each region. The same varieties are grown all over the country in the same plot sizes and similar fertilizer regimens.

Lamb also has an eye to his future employment, and says, "There's a big opening now in the market for turf grass graduates."

Is there a downside to his chosen profession?

"You don't get to golf very much. You work from 6 a.m. until about 5 p.m., and the last place you want to be after that is out on the course."

Figure 1: Jason Lamb
High resolution jpg file available at: http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/ag/jasonLamb.jpg