An ongoing battle (Wetting agents)

For Steve Campbell, wetting agents aren’t a miracle product; they’re just another gun in the arsenal of turfgrass management.

“If you know how to use them and what they’re supposed to do, they work,” says Campbell, director of agronomy at Las Campanas, a 36-hole facility that sits on 5,000 acres of high desert in Santa Fe, N.M. “If you don’t know what they do, you won’t get good results. There’s no ‘follow A, B, C and D,’ and you’ll be successful. Find out what your problems are and figure out how to fix them. If wetting agents work for me, I believe they’ll work for everyone if they apply them to their individual needs and situations. Each golf course is different. You don’t treat them all the same.”

Campbell manages 100 employees and runs the golf course, landscape, public works and revegetation divisions at Las Campanas, a Lyle Anderson development. Budgets are confidential, but Campbell’s is more than $1 million.

Campbell, who’s been at Las Campanas for 12 years, is a big believer of wetting agents and has used them his entire career. He injects wetting agents into the irrigation system, using 1/16 to ¼ of an ounce per thousand square feet of turf per day.

Las Campanas receives just 12 inches of rainfall a year, so water is king.

“I need to make water wetter to conserve and use every drop,” Campbell says. “Wetting agents break the surface tension of the water droplet and force it to go into the soil.”

Under water conservation mandates, the most water Campbell can use per golf course per day is 600,000 gallons, even though he says he can use less than that during less stressful months of the year. Determining how much water he uses is a complicated system, he says. He checks water use every morning via a computerized monitoring system and reports it monthly. Other parties, namely municipalities, can check his water use daily if desired.

The water is high in salts and bicarbonates, which makes it difficult for Campbell to flush the soil. He can flush salts down into the soil profile with the annual 12 inches of rainfall and the wetting agents he uses.

The bentgrass Campbell grows isn’t native to the area. He says there has been ongoing talk about changing the turf, but the native grasses (buffalograss, for example) would never be used because they wouldn’t survive if cut at turf heights.

“I have bentgrass on greens, tees and fairways,” he says. “The temperature will go down to zero degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and if I don’t have snow cover, I irrigate the turf once a week because the plant will freeze dry if I don’t because of the high winds and very low humidity. The crown needs to stay wet or it desiccates. We’re at 7,000-feet elevation. The Rocky Mountains begin here in Santa Fe.”

To treat localized dry spots, Campbell uses eight ounces of wetting agent per thousand square feet every two weeks. No matter how uniform a green is, there will be inconsistencies and localized dry spots, which is compounded with salts, he says.

Campbell says he has tried every wetting agent on the market and started using them in Philadelphia where it was hot and humid with an entirely different set of weather, soil and agronomic conditions.

“Surfside is the best wetting agent I’ve used,” he says. “I use it exclusively.”
Campbell uses wetting agents throughout the year and is always looking for a deal. He buys the 55-gallon drums even though the shipping is expensive.

“I spend a minimum of $12,000 on wetting agents a year,” he says. “There has been no year where I spent less than $10,000 on wetting agents. The drier the year, sometimes as little as four inches of rainfall a year, the more I need to supplement my irrigation.”

Campbell acknowledges there’s an uncertainty about wetting agents in the industry, but he says a superintendent has to know his soils, drainage, irrigation and turf problem areas.

“You need to spend the time to experiment,” he says. “One size doesn’t fit all. What I used in Philly is different than what I use out here. It’s no different than any other business. Attention to detail is the key, and versatility is key to success. You need to make adjustments. You don’t just dump a wetting agent in the tank and go.”

When Campbell sees a water-related problem, he applies a wetting agent, which alleviates the problem but doesn’t eliminate it.

“It will be different for me every year,” he says. “It’s frustrating, but just because it worked last year, doesn’t mean it will work exactly the same way this year. It’s an ongoing thing.”

Superintendents will always deal with localized dry spots and wetting-agent use, Campbell says.

“Every superintendent should have a wetting agent as part of his arsenal,” he says. “They’ve been around a while, but they must be doing something for someone because they’ve last a long time. That’s somewhat of a testimonial.” GCI