Fusariummy

I recently discussed how we can use fertilizer ratios to simplify how much fertilizer we apply to help us keep above the MLSN guidelines . When we get a soil test done it is a static amount of nutrients found in the soil. Even if you are above the MLSN guidelines at the time of testing, it doesn't guarantee that you will remain at or above the guidelines as the grass grows and consumes nutrients. There is math that you can use to determine exactly how much nutrient you need to apply to ensure that you remain at or above the MLSN guidelines. For many, this is much too complicated. For that reason I made a quick cheat sheet to help you determine how much of each nutrient you can expect to use each year based off a few different annual nitrogen rates. Nutrient use is based primarily on nitrogen use so the left 2 columns are a few different nitrogen rates. The columns for each nutrient are in PPM and are designed to help you look at your current soil test PPM (mehlich 3) and determin...

In a recent post, I discussed how it was actually cheaper to spray soluble vs granular fertilizer. What about if we use pre-mixed liquid fertilizer? How do we even figure out how much nutrient we are applying with pre-mixed liquid fertilizer?  Before I learned that you could simply dissolve soluble fertilizer in water and apply it in a sprayer, I was a big user of pre-mixed liquid fertilizers. One of the issues I initially had was figuring out exactly how much of each nutrient I was applying. The math wasn't as straightforward is it was with granular fertilizers. It turns out, it's actually not that difficult but requires an extra step.  First, we need to convert the liquid volume into a mass. Many products will have the product density displayed on the label or you can look in the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for that information as well. No SDS? Should you be using products without an SDS? Even if this information isn't included on the label it is very easy to figure out. All ...

When you make a fertilizer application, do you calculate the rate using the size of the greens, or the size of the area the fertilizer was applied to (spray area)? Unless you have a super high tech GPS sprayer with individual nozzle control, you likely also fertilize some of your green surrounds, collars and approaches when you fertilize your greens. This isn't a bad thing and can actually have a bunch of benefits. I talked all about this in a recent post where I discuss precision and whether or not it is actually useful or not on a golf course . Let's pretend my greens are 1ha in size and I apply one 25 kg bag of urea to that area. The rate would be 1.15g N/m^2 (25,000g urea x 46% N/g urea / 10000 m^2/ha = 1.15). If we include the overspray the area we applied fertilizer to turns to 1.2 ha. This changes our application rate to 0.96g N/m^2 which is 17% less! 17% is a pretty big number especially when spread out over a year. I have seen some examples with turf software where you...

I often receive criticism from people who say that the fertilizer savings I have found from using soluble fertilizer sources and the MLSN come at a cost of higher sprayer usage. I normally tell them "nu uh" but maybe it would be better if I looked into it a bit more closely. We used to spend upwards of $30,000 on fertilizer for our golf course. In the past few years we have averaged $6000. This is a savings of $24,000 per year on fertilizer by spraying soluble source fertilizer as required by the MLSN and my growth rate targets. Our annual cost of ownership for our Toro Workman Multipro Spray System on Workman HDXD 4wd chassis is $22,122. This includes everything from the cost of the lease, parts, equipment maintenance labor, fuel and labor to operate the machine for the first 5 years of its service life. Right away we can see that this strategy saves us about $2000 a year vs using granular fertilizers and other nutrient guidelines. We aren't even taking into account the ...

Most of our greens have slowly transitioned towards bentgrass dominated swards in the past few years In a recent post I discussed how the nutrient content of the soils was different depending on the depth and outlined some ideas of how we could use this to our advantage. We can keep poa super happy with more consistency (it's known to be temperamental and this is probably why) or we can use it to suppress poa while promoting other turf species like bentgrass or fescue. There are major differences in nutrient content at depth and it is useful to understand this but it is also cumbersome to test at various depths or tissue test every week like some might do. Instead, we can use our Supercharged fertilizer and clipvol records to help us understand how much nutrient we are removing from the turfgrass system and adjust our fertilizer applications to either under-fertilize or apply a sufficient amount of each nutrient to favor one turfgrass species over the other. We can estimate how mu...

Having good fertilizer records is important because it's important to know what you have done so that you can plan for the future. I've seen so many instances of fertilizer records that are descriptions of what you have done, but are formatted in a way that provides little information that is easily digested or that can be used to guide future decisions. At the most basic level a fertilizer application record should contain the date, area applied, type of product, amount of product and your spreader setting and looks like this: One of my first digital fertilizer records from 2008 While this is a good record of what you did at the most basic level, it is almost next to useless to actually help you understand how much of each nutrient was applied. Are you applying fertilizer for the name on the bag or are you applying fertilizer to alter the nutrient content of your soils? Making these calculations easier was one of the main reasons I initially switched from paper records to a sp...

I am totally guilty of making the MLSN more complicated than it needs to be. When the MLSN was first developed, it showed me a whole new world in the ways that I could fertilize grass. Naturally, I wanted to test the limits and see what else I could learn. In the process I did some complicated math, calculations and measurements to have fun with this new found knowledge. The MLSN are not targets, they are soil levels you should not go below and do not include nitrogen recommendations. Not everyone needs or should do that, however. The MLSN guidelines are actually extremely easy to use and you don't have to do much math if any to get the full benefit of the guidelines. You can make it as easy or difficult as you want. Micah Woods has talked about it before on his blog but I will share it again with my own take. If you want to make turfgrass fertilizing as simple as possible. Don't test your soils and simply just apply fertilizer in the ratio that the nutrients are found in the...

It has now been over 10 years since I first started using the MLSN guidelines. In that time I've written a ton about how I've tried to use it and how it has benefited my operation. A lot of people were, and still are skeptical of this "new" way of fertilizing grass but after a decade of use, I think it's safe to say that this way of fertilizing grass is probably good, especially for your budget. I've heard people say "your greens will have 8 weeks to live" and it is now over 500 weeks and they are doing just fine. While many people (including many university professors) still confuse the MLSN with low nitrogen rates, the guidelines are actually intended to ensure that you have enough of the other nutrients in the soil and take the annual use rate (based on nitrogen rates) into account to ensure that you apply fertilizer to stay above the guidelines. They are not target (although I have used them as such) but are levels that you should not go below. W...