 |
Golf course superintendents must strike a balance between maintaining their courses cost-effectively while ensuring the turf offers an optimal playing surface that meets member expectations.
Not surprisingly, the still uncertain economy has forced some courses continue to manage their turf under the "do more with less" scenario. In fact, according to recent Golf Course Industry State of the Industry data, more than two thirds of superintendents (67 percent) report that they are operating with a reduced budget, and more than a quarter (28 percent) say their 2014 budgets remain unchanged from the previous year.
As a result, cost-cutting measures must be made. Nearly half of superintendents say, to accommodate tight budgets, they reduced equipment spending (48 percent), reduced chemical spending (42 percent) and reduced fertilizer spending (44 percent). In addition, nearly a third (32 percent) indicate they've rolled back condition standards as a cost-cutting measure.
Meanwhile, there is rising concern among state regulatory agencies, environmentalists and soils experts over the steady use of chemical-based products for fighting insects and disease and the potentially long-term impact these products.
While most superintendents use chemicals responsibly and in varying degrees depending upon turf conditions, others have sought out natural alternatives to build and sustain healthy turf.
Creating balance
Soil and turf conditions at golf courses throughout the country varies, thus requiring different treatment methods.
Good drainage is the number one requirement for growing quality turfgrass, says Paul Latshaw, a nationally recognized, veteran golf course superintendent and turfgrass health consultant, and who has overseen preparation of many PGA tournament venues. With insufficient drainage, problems snowball, including compaction, thatch build-up, weeds, and insect invasion.
“A healthy plant can ward off these conditions,” Latshaw says. "But when a plant is under stress, that’s when these negative conditions occur and the use of pesticides becomes very heavy.”
 |
To grow and maintain healthy turfgrass, Latshaw recommends establishing balanced soil that has a proper nutrient base, aeration, good air and water relationships, and soil properties.
“There are two evils to growing grass: watering too much and using too much nitrogen,” he says.
Studies have shown that too much nitrogen applied to turfgrass can kill it, Latshaw says.
“If you have a good microbial base in the soil, these conditions can be controlled,” he says. This also means that with microbes working in the soil there will be a dramatic reduction in pesticide levels and, thus, a stronger, healthier plant.
Moisture can then be stretched out three or four days before any irrigation has to be applied. This varies depending upon temperature. “Once that soil balance and relationship is established, I’ve seen greens and fairways that are going with less than one to two pounds of nitrogen per year,” Latshaw says. “When you have that, it means you have a tremendous root system and very healthy soil.”
BMP and IPM
Chemical products have been used responsibly on golf courses for decades, but in recent years the industry has come under some intense scrutiny. It's not unusual for stories to focus less on responsible use and sustainability and more on the perceived destructive effects of chemicals on people, animals and plants.
When used according to label directions, chemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers approved for use on golf course turf have not been widely proven to pose a health risk to workers who apply chemicals or to those who may come into contact with them, including golfers.
In the past few years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been requiring toxicity testing and regulates the use of pesticides and other chemicals in agriculture\, as well as for golf courses. And, since 1995, the EPA has attempted some bridge building between the golf industry and environmentalists to achieve more ecological sustainability of golf courses.
Likewise, 2002 study initiated by the USGA Turfgrass and Environmental Research Online notes that Best Management Practices (BPM) include every aspect of turf maintenance, emphasizing that “an inseparable part of the BMP approach is the use of integrated pest management (IPM). The study states that IPM is an “ecologically based system that uses biological and chemical approaches to control.”
The need for chemical inputs will always be required for turf maintenance. However, a movement among many courses to wean themselves off of total dependency on chemicals to maintain turf is gaining traction.
When Jeremy Schaefer accepted his role as superintendent at Pine Brook Golf Course in Manalapan, N.J., he faced not only an 18-hole golf course in poor condition, leading to fewer rounds of daily fee golfing, but also a small budget and skeletal crew to maintain his course. The course itself had numerous deficits: Tees, fairways and greens were besieged with goosegrass; much of the course lacked sufficient grass; greens were severely pockmarked; and course soil was heavily compacted.
Schaefer spent his first year eradicating the goosegrass by over-seeding and fertilizing heavily on fairways and tees to promote healthier grass that would fill in. Several pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicide applications were made to the course to eradicate weeds. The approach worked.
When Schafer arrived at his job, “The soils were just hard,” he says. “The first thing I did was get the soils loosened up, get them aerated.”
He used a biostimulant, Adam Earth fertilizer, to get organisms in the ground to respond. “You’ve got to have a root system to have a good performing green,” Schaefer said. “So, I really started to use a lot of amendments on the soil.”
Schaefer also used APEX-10, an organic formula designed to stimulate soil conditions and plant performance as well as microorganisms. He saw improvements in his turf.
After launching a trial on a green with an microbial amendment offered by GreatGrow, Schaeffer says he observed dramatic and promising visual changes in the green’s turf.
“I also was able to study soil test data after sending soil samples to Soil Food Web New York," he says. "The data showing improvement in soil health and root growth solidified my decision to incorporate this kind of microbial product as a tool in my organic program and natural maintenance approach to building good soil structure.”
Schaeffer applied the amendment to about 4,000 square feet of putting green. “I had my green filled in within seven days,” he says.
Prior to the GreatGrow application, the green was fertilized and aerated. “We were back to good playing condition within two weeks of the aeration,” Schaefer says.
Penetrometer readings now show the soil is starting to loosen up. Schaefer plans to use GreatGrow on all his greens. One reason he gives is the dramatic change he sees in golf green root mass.
“The roots on the putting green (where GreatGrow was applied) are bright white, and there’s a lot of root hairs, so you can see they’re healthy,” he says.
More biology needed
A big reason superintendents are battling soil problems is because their courses contain too much sand, says soils scientist Elaine Ingham, president of her own consultancy, Soil Foodweb, Inc., Corvallis, Ore. The sand has inorganic salts that rob water from the plant and kill organisms in the soil. The solution, Ingham says, is to use a microbial-based amendment so that it can release more generations of organisms—bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes—into the soil to foster a constant inoculum of microorganisms that will build soil structure deeper and deeper.
“Once you put the biology on the turf and you don’t do anything to kill it, that biology constantly resupplies those organisms in the granules (of a microbial amendment) and they keep reproducing,” Ingham says.
Superintendent Mark Jordan believes an organic approach to creating turf health should be a focus for the industry.
“For my situation (at the Westfield Country Club in Westfield Center, Ohio), the overall plant health is most important,” Jordan says. “You get the best of both worlds when you look at organic and chemicals. The bottom line is it comes down to water management when you look at disease and soil structure. If your soils have good aeration and gas exchange, then the soil profile is going to be healthy.”
Jordan oversees a 36-hole golf course, much of which was built on pasture land and crop farmland. An extensive aeration program is in place, and wetting agents are applied on fairways.
Healthy turf maintenance depends largely on water management, Jordan says.
“It’s important to fracture the soil so that we can get water movement in it, primarily in the fairways,” he says.
Similar to most golf courses, greens at Westfield Country Club demand extra attention. “We have six different compositions of green soil mix on our south golf course,” he says, “which creates a challenge with the nutrient and water management.”
So, Jordan applies a granular fertilizer on the greens through aeration, with foliar applications in the summer, and uses Floratine Foliar products, biostimulants designed to foster turf strength and health. Jordan also stepped up venting from once every three weeks to every other week starting in 2012 to provide channels for water to get down deep to establish better root growth.
Making the move
Chemical treatments for turf may attack disease symptoms, but not the causes, according to Stanley Thornton, president and founder of GreatGrow, Inc., and himself a soils authority. Once a turf disease killed off, the anerobic or disease-causing organisms will repopulate much faster than aerobic organisms, he says.
“If you go back and apply aerobic soil treatment onto an area that was treated with chemicals, now you’ve reversed the recovery process,” Thornton says. “So, by having the beneficial organisms come back and repopulate first, you are still getting the benefit of starting to build a healthy soil structure and plant environment.”
A superintendent transitioning to a microbial approach will want to keep some chemicals on hand in case there is an outbreak of disease that healthy plants cannot fight off.
“You can stop this outbreak in its tracks with the chemicals, then come back and replace the destroyed organisms in the soil,” Thornton says.
Achieving and sustaining optimal turf health means a microbial exchange may become more preferred. Understandably, superintendents well entrenched with maintenance schedules that include chemical products are hesitant to switch to a total microbial program.
Latshaw recommends superintendents ease into the transition.
“If they (superintendents) are willing to spend the money and start with an area for planting with microbial-based amendments and see results, I think they’ll go that way,” he says. “I have seen this organic concept implemented throughout the country and the quality of (golf course) play is better. You can play on a nice firm, dry playing surface because the plant is healthy and growing at a natural rate."
