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Showing posts from November, 2013

Growth Potential Fertility: After 2 years

GP finally = 0!! Growth Potential Fertility (GP) is still a relatively new concept in turfgrass management. For the past 2 years I have been using it as the main method to determine rates and timing of fertilizer applications. If you haven't already read this  excellent article  by Dr. Micah Woods, I highly suggest you do otherwise this post won't make much sense. I currently use GP to fertilize greens, tees, and fairways. My main motivation to use GP fertility is to reduce the incidence of disease and to reduce or eliminate any excess or waste in my operation. That is the main purpose of GP, to only apply as much nutrients as the plant needs at the correct times. I have had quite a few questions how I use GP in practice. Here is a brief overview of how I use GP on each area of my golf course. For Greens I apply simple soluble source nutrients weekly applied through my sprayer. Every Monday I check the forecast and from this I get the average temperature for the following week...

A Funny Story

So here's a funny story. Last Tuesday the 28th of Oct as I was finishing up mowing fairways I took a pass across the approach of the first green just to see how it looked. The past 2 days had seen a heavy frost so I wasn't able to get onto the greens to have a good look. To my horror the entire green appeared yellow. "Oh shit! I've killed the greens.....again!!!" The Saturday before I couldn't believe how great the greens looked. Everything was looking good going into November and the winter. I wasn't going to let what happened last winter happen again. Dead grass this time of year sucks to say the least. So that Tuesday night I got no sleep. I was a nervous wreck. The next day I went out to check on everything and yep, I thought I had killed them. I tried to figure out what went wrong. The Sunday before was a nice day and my weekend staffer assured me there wasn't any frost when he rolled. I didn't believe him or the pro shop staff. This had to be...