FERTILIZERS ON FINE TURF Facts Not Fiction

TOO many misleading statements are being made about the use of fertil izers on fine turf and especially suggestions that there is no agreement by scientists on what fine turf requires. This is partly caused by the different demands on different grasses and what applies to golf greens does not apply to football pitches. Some of this controversy is being created by those seeking to increase the sale of fertilizers, who are (rightly, from their viewpoint) concerned about the very low turnover on fertilizer sales made to golf courses and who deny all the evidence available about the harmful results on the quality of the turf by excessive use of the wrong type of fertilizer. It must be clearly understood that we are concerned in golf greenkeeping primarily with two fine turf species Agrostis and Festuca and 'all the rest are weeds. ' An incontrovertible fact is that the fertilizer usage of those golf clubs with courses in the best order is very, very small generally little more than £250 per annum per 18 holes and often less. This is borne out by recent checks and is further supported by the fact that the percentage sales of fertilizers in relation to other products by the leading suppliers to golf greenkeeping is little more than ten per cent of their turnover. Confusion is a bad basis for any sales campaign and any forecast based on a combination of wild exaggerations of the number of golf courses in the UK (there are many more clubs than courses) and pious hopes that fertilizer sales can be boosted to levels that were used last year on one particular venue, fail to take into account that such gross over-use l eaves a l egacy of annual meadow-grass dominance and of resultant and almost uncontrollable disease and, looking to the future, excessive thatch production. One fact beyond debate is that annual meadow-grass (Poa annua) is the cause of most problems in g r e e n k e e p i n g . W h e t h e r its dominance is avoidable or preventable, may be more subject to debate (though many good greenkeepers can claim to have this pernicious and ubiquitous weed under control). What is unarguable is that this variable, but basically short-lived species, may give good playing conditions in the few months when it is growing actively, but (as we have seen all too often in the poor growing conditions this spring, with a very delayed start to growth) it is quite incapable of producing tolerable surfaces under 'winter' conditions and the winter of '85/'86 extended from October to May. Soft, thatchy, sickly, diseased, uneven, foot-printed, slow, soggy putting surfaces, suffering from wear and winter die back, are succeeded by prolific seeding and drought and wear susceptibility. Panic remedial measures all too often merely aggravate the problem. The link between Poa annua invasion or dominance and the application of phosphatic and potassic fertilizers has been reported for at least 65 years and known for many years before that. The following two quotes are taken from literature: