Holding out

When it comes to producing a strong stand of turf that’s also sustainable, Dick Duggan, superintendent at The Meadow at Peabody Golf Course, says the secret isn’t just cutting back on fertilizer. It also means making the soil tough enough to last longer between applications.

“You’re only as good as the soil you have underneath you,” Duggan says. “If you have a good foundation, you can grow anything. That’s my key.”

During the last seven years, Duggan has been using bionutrition products to support that soil, promoting helpful bacteria he says wards off fungus and keeps nutrients available to the turf. Since he’s started using bionutrition, he’s been able to cut back on his fertilizer and pesticide use.

“There’s really interesting science about the whole thing,” he says. “What I try to do is stretch it as long as I can between applications. You know your environment, you know what you deal with and you can make your adjustments to take care of the turf. But this helps here.”

Duggan uses a late-season bionutrition application to support the turf through the winter, bulking his turf up over the season and kickstarting the greenup the following year, cutting down on his need for more fertilizers and additional protection against winter stress on turf.

“It seems everything’s energized right now with the high temperatures, so we’re off and running,” says Duggan. “Things have really greened up, which is good. We’re about two or three weeks ahead of schedule along with this winter weather.”

But now that the turf is coming out of winter, his planned bionutrition applications will cut back on the amount he needs to put down throughout the season, keeping chemicals on his course to a minimum.

“I can get maybe an additional week out of something that I normally wouldn’t before,” he says. “I always say, if every 14 days I’m applying something, I can get 21, 28 days in. But I’m always looking for the certain areas where we have trouble and we do some spot application. We thrive on good air circulation, good sunlight, but we’ve been able to stretch the days in between the spraying. If I can get another week out of it, all the better.”

Beyond making his course more environmentally friendly, the lower usage helps keep his management happy by helping him “manage the numbers. That goes along with it.”

But what it really comes down to for him is the best health for the plants on his course during summer stress and under pressure of play, he says.

“There’s a lot of good benefits for plant health care,” he says. “When we get into the stress time, you get into that week of 90 plus weather and it holds up, that makes a big difference.

“With the amount of play we get here   this is a public course. You can’t just lean the nitrogen. The plant needs to recover from the golf, from the traffic and the ballmarking and all that. You’ve got to feed the plant.”