fertilizer

The normal range of calcium (Ca) in irrigation water is 20 to 60 ppm. That comes right from Penn State’s Irrigation water quality guidelines for turfgrass sites. Were you surprised by the previous post that worked out daily Ca use by the grass, and Ca added in irrigation water, to find that irrigation water was supplying 26 times more Ca than the grass was using?

A friend gave me a beautiful card yesterday and wrote “perhaps you can use this Taraxacum officinale [dandelion] in some capacity.” I certainly can. Contining with the topic of my last post—cases in which low nutrient levels are desirable—the mention of dandelions reminds me of another case in which I’d adjust fertilizer recommendations.

The MLSN guideline for phosphorus (P) is 21 ppm. I usually recommend enough P fertilizer to keep soil P, as measured by the Mehlich 3 extractant, from dropping below 21 ppm.

Remember the Viridescent blog, with its 841 posts made from 1 January 2009 until I switched to this new site in 2017? I’ve summarized the top posts on that site by year, here, and today I checked the most viewed posts of all time.

Last week I led a seminar about MLSN on Monday. Then I did it again on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. In these approximately three hour seminars each day, I went into a lot of detail about MLSN.

I showed the appearance of two greens-type grasses—Tifeagle and a greens-type manilagrass—in this post. That post had photos of the grasses, 28 days after planting, when fertilized with N only, with N + P + K, and with N + P + K + dolomite.

I wondered what would happen if I added P and K and dolomite, or withheld those elements, from some turf I planted recently at ATC南店. Tifeagle 28 days after planting in coconut coir as 3 cm diameter plugs.

I really enjoyed listening to John Kaminski on season 2 episode 3 of the Talking Greenkeeper. It was fascinating to hear how the new edition of Turfgrass Management by Turgeon and Kaminski came together.

In the ATC update sent earlier this week—subscribe here if you’d like to get on this list—I mentioned that one of the highlights of my year so far was the Royal Turf Family Seminar at the Park Hyatt Tokyo.

The turfgrass genki level is a way to express the degree to which turgrass is being pushed to grow, or restructed from growing, by the supply of nitrogen.