Turf Managers throughout the East Coast of the US have been in a weather pattern not seen in a few years. Abundant amounts of rainfall. Thankfully, the really hot temperatures have not followed the rain, and other than scheduling issues the weather has not caused a lot of trouble for the most part. A few points to remember about your agronomic program during these rainy times. The term “LUXURY CONSUMPTION” can refer to many things but were going to focus on the two main issues for this article. Nutrition and Water Management. read more →

Plant tissue analysis offers a precise measurement of the nutritional status of a plant at the time the sample was collected; a snap shot in time. This information allows a manager to determine if a specific nutrient is lacking before a deficiency symptom becomes apparent. It also provides information on the relative health of the turf grass and interrelationships between all essential plant nutrients. When tissue testing is used in conjunction with a soil analysis, it can provide information of what nutrients are most critical and how best to correct them. One example of this is if pH is at a critical level, a foliar application of an iron compound might be preferable to a soil application. read more →

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard, “I had to go back and throw more seed because it didn’t take the first time.” The first question I always ask is “What do you think caused it?” Water, light, heat, traffic, fertility, seed, and a lot of other variables come into play when overseeding fails to germinate and establish uniformly. And guess what, applying calcium before or at time of seeding, helps 90% of the time. Now I say. “Have you applied your Calcium before your overseeding this fall?” “Do you want to increase the germination, uniformity, maturity, and overall plant survival by about 90%?” read more →

Many times I see a facility invest a lot of money in equipment or product that they may not necessarily need. Florida’s overall weather patterns are quite easy to predict! (I may be the first to actually believe this.) By this I mean that Florida has a very predictable dry season and an equally predictable wet season. The dry season calls for every turf manager to be ready to amend soils properly to offset potential salt problems in the soil. The wet season usually does not provide enough flushing rainfall to adequately exchange the sodium built up on the soil colloid if those soils haven’t been amended properly during the dry season. read more →

Imagine a scenario where you have been consistently collecting soil data for tees, fairways, and greens for more than five years, using one lab and one procedure. Does this sound familiar to you? If it does, great! Regular soil testing is an invaluable tool for developing and fine-tuning fertilizer and soil amendment programs. Receiving accurate and consistent values from the laboratory, coupled with personal observations, allows for intelligent decision making in the field. But what if you were to discover that the data for all those years was wrong? Would you change to a more accurate procedure? read more →

Sodium (Na+) as an individual element is commonly found in irrigation water, along with many others (like calcium, magnesium, potassium, sulfur and iron, etc). Salts are actually the dry form of two or more elements combined. When salts come in contact with water, they dissolve into their component elements once again, but when in water, they now have a “charge.” The sum charges of dissolved salts constitute the total salinity of the irrigation water, or any other body of water, for that matter. read more →