MLSN

When my friend wrote to ask if I could “write a brief description of MLSN,” I thought I might send along the article on turfgrass fertilization from the Green Section Record by Meentemeyer and Whitlark.

This question came some months ago: “I’m just pondering something about MLSN levels for Bent vs Poa and so hopefully you can clear it up. Having seen a bit of research coming out about k levels affecting disease pressure differently for poa and Bent does that not mean there should be two different MLSN’s for the two species?

“Do the MLSN guidelines use 17 essential nutrients? I’ve found a couple good articles,” my friend wrote, “but I couldn’t really find a number on the MLSN website.” “That’s an interesting question,” I replied, “and I may answer it on my blog.

I went to Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane to discuss the MLSN approach to soil test interpretation in four seminars organized by Living Turf. In these seminars, I explained that the use of the MLSN guidelines is as simple as planning how many beers to buy for an upcoming party.

I taught two seminars at the 2017 Philippine Golf Course Management conference. One was about MLSN after 5 years. I explained what soil test interpretation is, why the MLSN guidelines were developed, and explained how they work.

Not everyone understands how the MLSN guidelines work. I saw a photo shared by Andrew McDaniel followed by a number of replies from STSAsia exhibiting confusion on the latter’s part about the use of the MLSN guidelines.

When I received an e-mail from Tom Sedlmeier a couple months ago, I was reminded of this update on the Sports Turf Solutions Facebook page in 2012: I just read a blog that puts every Turf Managers [sic] budget under scrutiny.

The recording of my webinar on preventing nutrient deficiencies is available in Spanish and in English. This was fun. I hope you’ll read the handout too. It is only 4 pages, with lots of white space, and gives a brief overview of this important topic.

That arrived in my inbox recently, plus a few questions about calculating K requirements using the MLSN guidelines, and whether if there are minimum levels, are there optimum levels too? Here’s how I answered.

I feel like there is something not everyone understands about the quantity of fertilizer recommended by the MLSN guidelines. A question came up in my Twitter feed and I wasn’t sure if it was about implementing MLSN, or not.