www.toro.com (The Toro Company)
The Toro Company's web site provides information on their product lines for home yard care, golf course management, grounds management, landscape contractors, and recycling and debris management. Specifically under golf course management you will find Turf Equipment, Irrigation Equipment, Agronomics, Wood-Waste Recycling, and Computer Software. If you are looking to purchase a snow thrower before the end of January, Toro has a promotional deal where they will refund up to 50% of the purchase price if the actual snowfall is less than historical snowfall. Where was this deal last winter?

www.rainbird.com (Rain Bird Sprinkler Mfg. Corp.)
This is the Rain Bird Irrigation web site. You can acquire information regarding agricultural irrigation, consumer irrigation, golf irrigation, landscape drip irrigation, and turf irrigation. Within Golf Irrigation, Product Information, you will find a picture of the Superintendents Office in which you can select any product line including valves, rotors, satellites, controls, and weather stations. Under Turf Irrigation, Technical Information, you can download Specdraw97, Sports Field Drawings, and Troubleshooting Guides.

www.deere.com (John Deere)
John Deere's web site carries everything from Agriculture to Construction to Grounds Care. Within Grounds Care, you can go to Lawn and Garden, Skid Steers, Commercial, Gator Utility Vehicles, Homelite, Golf and Turf, and Sabre. Once you get into Golf and Turf, you can access the Tip of the Week, Feedback '97, Equipment Product Line, and PGA Tour. By the way did you know that John Deere is now the "Official Golf Course Equipment Supplier of the PGA Tour", providing a full range of golf and turf equipment, along with utility vehicles and selected construction equipment on an exclusive basis to each of the Tour's owned-and-operated TPC courses. As courses are added around the world to the TPC network, each new course also will be groomed with John Deere equipment.

www.greenindustry.com (Green Net Online Network)
This site includes publications from Arbor Age, California Fairways, Irrigation Journal, Landscape Design, Landscape and Irrigation, and Sports Turf. It also has folders called Industry Links, Classified Adds, and Bookstore. There is also a link to a folder called Green News. This is an industry report which is updated daily. The reports are listed by title and a brief description. If the article interests you, just click with the mouse to get the full story. This is a very effective way to lookup reports such as birch leaf minor, tree fertilization, etc. There is another folder called Discussion, which includes discussion groups on Arbor Topics, General Green Net, Landscape and Irrigation, Power Equipment, and Turfgrass. Within these groups, you can post a comment in order to get feedback from peers in our industry. There is also a live chat room where you can talk to someone immediately, but no one was there when we checked this area out.

www.usga.org (United States Golf Association)
This site includes Rules of Golf, Handicap System, Green Section, and Museum to name just a few. In order to find a specific rule under the Rules of Golf, first click the mouse on the general area (i.e. ball, player, stroke play, match play, etc.) and then the rule is broken down into more detail. There is also a small section on golf etiquette, which includes courtesy on the course, priority on the course, and care of the course. Handicap System includes the history of handicapping, the USGA handicap system manual, and establishing a USGA handicap index. The Green Section was founded more than 7 decades ago and deals with authoritative information for turfgrass management. You will find this a valuable source of knowledge. The Museum has a virtual tour of the Golf House, which teaches about the history of golf.

www.igin.com (Irrigation and Green Industry Network)
This site contains folders called Landscape, Golf Course Superintendent, and Landscape Architecture. Landscape includes classifieds, landscape articles on trees, seeds, weeds, pest control, fountains, labor relations, etc. Golf Course Superintendents and Landscape Architecture both contain articles pertaining to their respective professions. It also includes Databases for Chemicals, Trees, Shrubs, Vines and Groundcover, and Bedding Plants. Irrigation Specs is broken down by controller, sprinkler, and valve and allows you to search for these specific components by manufacturer.

If you come across any interesting web sites (turf or non-turf related) please forward this information to: Dave at dallan@fairviewc.ab.ca or Steve at deermeadows@hotmail.com.

Turf Line News February/March 1999