Turf: The benefits of Sound Nutrition

Balancing your nutrients in the soil is a wonderful challenge and you will certainly reap the benefits of doing so. An annual soil test is a wonderful guideline & even better when you do leaf testing to see what nutrients are available to the plant.

The plant needs your basic cations calcium, magnesium, potassium & sodium to be in balance. Sulphur is important to turf, however you do not want this element too high in poorly draining soils. The micronutrients are also a key part of the web. With the soil test results we can plan the nutrition for the 6-12 months ahead and tweak it as we get the leaf results on a regular basis.

Once we have established the nutrition programme we tie in the integrated pest management.

Talking Turf work closely with many golf clubs to ensure their application timing is such that they are running a sustainable programme whilst producing their ultimate playing surface within their budget.

I have enjoyed a long working relationship with Syngenta who spend millions of dollars per annum on research & development to ensure we can take care of diseases, weeds & insects without having any detrimental effect on beneficial insects, mammals or fish as well as the turf.

Ensure that you know your products are turf registered and working with nature. We are also able to tank mix beneficial microbes with any of the Syngenta turf range to ensure we have a healthy functioning soil.

The direct correlation to putting green, fairway or semi rough health to irrigation practises & nutrition practises always fascinates me. There are so many ways to attain the end goal, but I truly believe it is time courses stand up and make the sustainable choices.

This article was written by Sue de Zwart, Talking Turf and oringally appeared in South Africa Golf Trader.