soil

When it comes to fearmongering in turfgrass, I’m not sure there is a bigger one than bicarbonate (HCO3-). One often hears of supposed problems associated with bicarbonate. I’m still waiting to see a soil or turfgrass problem associated with this ubiquitous anion.

I measured soil moisture and surface hardness on three fairways, approaches, and greens at a golf course in Thailand in September 2014. The fairways and approaches at this site are seashore paspalum on a sandcap.

I’ve been asked this question more times than I can remember. It usually goes something like this. We had the soil tested, and it turns out we are quite low in P (or K or Ca or Mg).

Growing up and first working in the turfgrass industry in the United States, I naturally used US customary units: inches and feet, pounds and ounces, fluid ounces and gallons and so on.

This is an extraordinarily good video about grasses, mowing, construction, irrigation, soils, playability, maintenance cost, and more. If you are interested in these topics, watch this interview with Don Mahaffey.

Update: I’m adding a note here today (21 Nov 2017) to correct and clarify about these data. Mike Richardson pointed out to me that the “differences from plots irrigated to field capacity 2X or 6X / wk were small and not significant” in this experiment.

At a Vancouver Island Golf Superintendent Association meeting in spring 2014, I spoke about turfgrass nutrient requirements. The question a turfgrass manager must answer is this one: Can the soil supply enough of an element to meet the grass requirements, and if it cannot, then how much of the element must be applied as fertilizer?

Why use and pay for nutrients that the grass does not need or the soil does not require? That question, along with the title of this post, are quotes from the classic article by Zontek et al.

Sand rootzones are common the world over for golf course putting greens. Many athletic fields are also built with a sand rootzone, and in Asia, many of the tees, fairways, and even roughs are grown in a sand rootzone.

Do you ever think about fertilizer cost? The amount people spend varies a lot. Jason Haines, for example, has explained how he reduced fertilizer costs by 60%: I have to say, this new way of doing things is working a lot better than the old way.