“We had brilliant greens and then the greenkeeper made holes in them...”
Technology, offers an in-depth look at what a soil test might reveal and the effects each element has on grass growth
Richard Lawrence, Managing Director of Environmental Turf
THE LITTLE H
aving taken your soil samples and had them tested, you should have recorded levels for the following, pH, cec, organic matter, Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), Sulphur (S), Zinc (Zn), Manganese (Mn), Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Boron (B) and Sodium (Na). All of these levels are important in the management of high quality turf.
Oxygen, the most important nutrient of them all
A comprehensive soil test shows most of the nutrients required for healthy turf, however, we cannot test for the most important nutrient, oxygen. It is vital that the turf manager conducts mechanical aeration as, not only will this extra oxygen benefit the plant, it will also free other nutrients within the soil. The comment that demonstrated to me the importance of professional turf managers was from a golfer; “We had brilliant greens and then he made holes in them”. I pointed out that it was the other way round, “he made holes in the greens, then they were brilliant”. I tell all the turf managers that I work with that, the world’s leading sporting venues who charge higher prices to use their facilities, often conduct the most aeration as they understand that this will provide better facilities for everyone, this is despite the fact that they risk upsetting customers who are using the facilities following the aeration. A rootzone starved of oxygen will not sustain healthy turf. All forms of life require oxygen.
What’s in the water?
If your soil test results show a level that is a well outside the targets that you have set, test the water that you use for irrigation and test the other
THINGS are important
products that you apply in bulk, such as topdressing.
A course that I advise in the south of England had very high levels of a number of nutrients, these we flushed with great success over the winter only to find that the levels rose again during the following summer. This was unexpected as the nutrition programme contained none of the nutrients that had been in excess. At a loss to explain this, we tested the irrigation water and found that the nutrients were contained in the water. If this is the case, you cannot change your water but you can ensure that you do not add nutrients that are going to become excessive and lock up other nutrients within your rootzone.
Don’t panic, you can sort it out and it wasn’t your fault in the first place
When you receive the results, if some or many of the levels are not what you targeted, the first and most important thing is don’t stress out. Remember that the turf is still growing, and you are now in a better position to manage your turf as you know what the problems are. The vast majority of imbalances within the rootzone are caused by factors that are outside your control. These include the quality of the rootzone or soil used during the original construction and, as we have discussed, the irrigation water. You cannot change these factors, so learn to live with them and manage what you have and not what you would like to have.
A Course Manager with a golf course on the east coast of Scotland received the results from his soil test, the calcium levels all showed the same figure, 10,000. I called the laboratory and suggested that they had made a mistake as the levels
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