Fertilizer

Minimum levels for sustainable nutrition—MLSN—is a modern method for interpreting soil tests for turfgrass.

I wrote an update about normal manganese (Mn) levels in soil and in turfgrass leaves. Mark Smith posted about Mn with some extraordinarily verdant grass and attributed the color to Mn.

I usually enjoy doing experiments. But there’s one that I helped out with as a graduate student that wasn’t any fun at all. Dr. Frank Rossi wrote about this in Effects of microbial and organic products on putting green performance.

I asked a question in the MLSN newsletter1 — when getting a recommendation for nutrients, would it make more sense to have that recommendation expressed as a ratio or as a percentage?

Have you ever seen seedheads on zoysia? Have you ever planted zoysia sod and seen a lot of seeds on some pieces but not on others? I’ve seen this a lot, and I’m not the only one.

Here are three primary things to be concerned with when considering soil and water: salinity, the sodium hazard, and nutrient deficiencies. I explain solutions for each of these problems in this post, which was originally a handout for a seminar I gave on this topic some years ago.

This is how I think everyone should do it. Make nutrient applications that have a site-specific ratio of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). I write this because I’ve had some questions about ratios and about fertilizer nutrient analysis, and I want to explain this in a general way.

Doug Soldat joined me for an ATC Office Hours discussion about leaf nutrient analyses (tissue testing) for turfgrass. I’ve embedded the video at the end of this post, link to it here, or listen to the podcast version here.

One of my favorite publications is the The Greenkeeper annual yearbook by Ikki Publishing Company. This yearbook includes annual maintenance summaries for golf courses in Japan. This is a type of practical information that I find really useful.

Joe Hollier wrote to me a few weeks ago asking if I could write something about MLSN for the STANZ newsletter. I sent this quick reply: Gosh, this is the kind of thing I should say no to because I’m quite busy and don’t want to add more things to do to my list.