BCGSA Professional Development Days
7–8 December 2023
Slides
You can download the slides here:
From Thursday, December 7: The inevitable consequences of regular rootzone measurements, 2.7 MB PDF file
From Friday, December 8: Nutrition, growth, and surface performance
Questions during the seminar
One of the questions was about different methods for soil test P. There’s a section about this in the MLSN cheat sheet. For example, an Olsen P equivalent to the “standard” MLSN is 6 ppm. Bray 2 is 30 ppm. If you are using those extractants, you can substitute 6 for Olsen or 30 for Bray 2; the standard Mehlich 3 MLSN for P is 21 ppm.
For more about this, see the blog post Converting between soil test extraction methods.
We also discussed nutrient availability by a water extraction (saturated paste). I find conventional soil tests adequate for assessing nutrient availability. If one wants to check if the grass is getting the nutrients, then I recommend checking the leaf tissue. Doing a saturated paste (water) test will always give lower nutrient values, sometimes quite low, but that does not mean that the grass will not be able to obtain enough from the soil. I’ve written about this in a blog post with the title “Available” calcium, soil pH, and fearmongering.
Notes
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For more about MLSN, check these pages:
OM and videos and podcasts
See more about OM246 testing, including sampling instructions and a sample report, at the OM246 project page.
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- The ATC YouTube channel
- The ATC Doublecut and the ATC Office Hours podcasts.