Healing with bionutrition

Though the season hasn’t quite given up, summer has given way to cooler temperatures and fiery colors. It’s easy to immediately think of aerification and interrupting play, but the shift in season is a call to Bernie Banas at Leatherstocking Golf Course in Cooperstown, New York, for another bio application.

“I’ll keep going with liquids until about the end of September, and then what I’ll do in the greens is aerify later, probably mid-October,” says Banas. “I’ll go down with a seaweed-based granular right before we aerify to get them moving a little bit for aerification recovery. The last app will be my dormant feed in November.”

Even though the strength of bio comes in bulking up turf dealing with summer stress, Banas relies on it to help his turf bounce back from a summer of usage and the pressure from aerification.

“I’m trying to keep my rooting mass consistent through the whole season,” says Banas. “I think the soil is the key to it. If you can feed the soil and get the soil healthy, that will take care of the grass plant. I’m not looking at it as these products are going into the plant and helping the plant all that much. If you take care of your soil, your plants are going to be healthy from that.”

The seaweed-based granular helps provide the base for heading into the winter season and preparing for the following year as well.

“What I’ve found is that coming out of wintertime, there’s a huge increase in the hardiness of the plant and the color,” says Banas. “It’s just a deep green that’s just incredible. It’s hard to really attribute to one thing, but seeing what I’ve started with before, and after, I’d have to attribute that to bio. I’ve reduced my fertilizer inputs dramatically.”

Beyond using less fertilizer, Banas is able to keep his soil more even and open to allow movement of air and nutrients to his plants. When he came to the course, there were already plenty of nutrients locked up in the ground that his plants could use, he says, but freeing them up took the introduction of bionutrition.

“When I first started, I did have some pretty heavy thatch, and I was able to reduce that using organics,” he says. “As the stuff was breaking down, the grass was growing like crazy. It had to be the stuff in the soil breaking down and releasing all those tied-up nutrients. I had so much in the soil reserves I was living off of that. I found it really carried me almost through to that dormant feed.

“It’s just a consistent growth rate throughout the season. It’s so much more rooting mass, and those roots are deeper. It just really seems to enhance the plant vigor. They’re getting the soil healthy, and that’s getting the plants healthy through the season.”

But one of the earliest benefits he saw was the positive image the course could show off in terms of being environmentally friendly and water-conscious, he says.

“There’s a huge lake that borders the course. When I took over the golf course, there was a huge public outcry that the course was putting these chemicals down and harming the lake,” he says. “I wanted to look at products that would have less of an impact on the water to show people that I was being proactive. That’s when we really started using them.”

Banas did see results on his course using manure and seaweed-extract products to help boost the health of his turf, but it took some time, he says. His biggest warning to superintendents trying to integrate the products into their lineup is that the change won’t be immediate.

“I don’t think these products are magic by any means,” he says, “but you use them to feed the soil and get the soil healthy. Your plants are going to be healthy from that.”