The health and appearance of a golf course can determine the financial success of a facility. Faced with increasing utility, labor and fertilizer costs, some golf course superintendents are introducing pesticides and fertilizers through modern chemigation and fertigation systems. This can help lower operating expenses through increased accuracy and decreased maintenance.
“Fertigation can definitely save some hard dollars for golf courses,” says Gary Hammerlund of L.L. Johnson Distributing Co., a Denver-based wholesale distributor of turf and irrigation supplies. “Liquid metering pumps are less expensive than the piece of mobile equipment it takes to put down granular fertilizer, plus you reduce man-hours because no one has to manually apply the fertilizer.”
The concept of using irrigation systems to apply fertilizer while watering was developed by Gary Newton, who founded Yuma, Colo.-based Agri-Inject in 1983.
To realize the maximum benefits chemigation and fertigation offer, superintendents need to select their equipment carefully. Jim Moore, the USGA Green Section’s director of construction education, has written that component quality should be nothing less than first-rate.
Agri-Inject’s chemigation systems use Milton Roy chemical metering pumps that employ Teflon diaphragms that flex gently to provide accuracy within +/- 1 percent to eliminate overfertilization and underfertilization, as opposed to piston-type pumps employed in earlier-generation systems that can waste as much as 5 percent of chemical volumes.
Since the diaphragm-design separates the internal workings of chemical metering pumps from the fluid being sprayed, it prevents leaks common to piston-type pumps. Keeping the fluid away from moving metal parts also helps prevent corrosion and makes it possible to spray thick substances like gypsum and soil polymers without clogging the chemigation pump. Combined with oil-bath lubrication of moving parts, maintenance is reduced and pump longevity increased to the point that Agri-Inject can offer a five-year warranty on its Milton Roy Series metering pumps.
“When an average golf course budget is $35,000 per year for chemicals and fertilizer, every edge helps,” Hammerlund says. “The golf and sports turf industry is starting to realize the advantages of liquid irrigation fertigation versus granular applications. It definitely cuts down on cost of products and manpower, plus it saves water.”