A nitrogen amount that's far too small—or is it?

An anonymous golf course superintendent sent me this message:

I’m blown away by the quality of these surfaces with an amount of nitrogen I would’ve thought was far too small.

I replied with this:

Paying attention to what the surface playability is, and to how much the grass is growing, really can change one’s ideas of what is enough, or normal, or low or high.

I’ve written about this a lot—see the related posts below—and have discussed it on the ATC Doublecut.

One post I’d like to recommend, specifically, has the title Flipping things around. The simple calculation of how much growth, or clipping volume, could be produced by a given quantity of N, tends to make N fertilizer rates that seemed normal in the past now seem rather high.

Another one to provide some context asks Is two tenths of a pound of nitrogen a lot, or a little?

You can scroll through the top secret ATC blog post archive to find other posts on similar topics.