Feed with foliars

Jim Huntoon of Heritage Golf Club considers himself pretty lucky. When most superintendents were dealing with an unusually hot and dry summer, Huntoon experienced fairly normal conditions in Myrtle Beach with adequate rainfall and moderate temperatures. Even so, he never once considered varying from his foliar fertilizer program.

“I’m a big-time user,” says Huntoon. “I use it year-round to keep my grass, and I have for a long time.”

Huntoon likes to spray every five to seven days during the growing season and every 14 days during the dormant season to maintain color on his Bermudagrass since he doesn’t overseed.

Even though Huntoon didn’t believe the effects of last summer like most parts of the country, he wasn’t able to escape the hurt in the summer of 2011. Being so close to the ocean, he has a lot of issues with water quality when it gets dry because a lot of the wells and rivers become brackish – which is what happened that summer. The result was lots of stress on his turfgrass.

“On my tees and greens, I was able to use foliar products and also soil-applied products to help alleviate salts in the rootzone – something I couldn’t do on the fairways because of the scale and how much it would cost,” he says. “And you could tell the fairways struggled a lot more because of that.”

The root system becomes highly ineffective in high-sodium conditions, and many times, the only way to get nutrients into Bermudagrass is through foliar feeding, Huntoon says. On the greens, for instance, he sprays liquid fertilizer and lightly waters it in to put it down by the crown or just below the surface of the grass where most of the roots are.

A regular fertilization program that includes foliars sets superintendents up well when a drought comes, Huntoon says. They allow for easier control of nitrogen input, cut down on mowing and improve turf quality, saving money and labor.

“What has worked for me throughout my career, whether you’re talking about foliars, herbicides, fungicides or pesticides, is a consistent program,” he says. “That always yields the best results.”

With Heritage GC being a year-round destination, it’s important for Huntoon to spray foliars on his greens to help withstand wear and tear when they’re dormant, plus influence a little growth and color – something he can’t do with soil-based fertilizers when soil temperatures are low.

Doug Middleton of Ocean Organics/Lebanon feels that more and more superintendents are catching on to the foliar fertilizers’ benefits.“I’m sort of struck by the fact that many people now already know about the need for these products,” he says. “For those who don’t, a drought is the kind of environmental condition that brings clarity to it. When you have stressful conditions that compromise root systems and you’re worried about disease but you want to control growth by controlling input, then foliars are the perfect tool.”

Middleton believes that, when faced with a drought like last summer, fewer superintendents were caught in “aha” moments because they were already approaching their nutrition programs with foliars in mind. But he admits the widespread nature of the excessively hot and dry conditions might have uncovered deficiencies in some superintendents’ fertilizer programs.

“Guys who got their eyes opened were maybe the guys who weren’t (using foliars) this year but looked around and noticed that people who seemed to be having more success were using them,” says Middleton, who saw the same phenomenon occur in the 1998 drought where superintendents were copying their colleagues who used foliars and survived the severe weather.

Middleton espouses a proactive approach when using foliars. “Nothing makes you think of your health more than when you’re sick. All of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Geez, I should have taken better care of myself,’” he says. “As a turf manager, your plan should be to do everything you can to get plants as healthy as you can going into a stressful situation. When you’re in trouble and it’s summer, your chances of getting nutrients in through the foliage are probably better than they are through your horribly compromised root system.”

But by no means should foliars be a plan unto themselves. Rather, they should be used in conjunction with granulars as part of an integrated approach to nutrition. The obvious benefit is the maintaining of health and color without getting “flush” growth – something he says superintendents are more aware of now.

“One thing that has changed a lot in the 20 years I’ve been doing this is superintendents are much more conscious of managing growth and not creating flush growth when energy is the limiting factor,” he says.

Under high-temperature, low-moisture conditions, plants suffer a decline in carbohydrates because they’re not producing energy through photosynthesis at the same rate they’re consuming energy through respirations So the last thing you want to do is sap the plant’s energy by promoting growth.

Gary Grigg of Grigg Bros. saw a spike in Northeast and Midwest sales last summer, due to the hot and dry conditions. “It’s not just foliars either,” he says. “The phosphites have led the way in summer stress. We’ve known for 12 years phosphite products have an impact on summer stress, especially if you have them mixed in with foliars.”

“During the summer, especially during hot weather, superintendents need to get on a program they have confidence in and stay on it,” he says. “The ones who get in trouble are those who pick and choose their own program and don’t look at what’s being recommended. We wouldn’t recommend it if we didn’t know it was a good program – save the granulars for spring and fall.”