SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/26719
the area is not always great for sports, nor is the water, and the old field was tight and over-used making mainte- nance hard and costly,” Moffitt said. “We brought in a lot of soil and ran soil tests and we were focused on or- ganic matter content and were hoping for at least 2.5-3%, which we were able to find; the pH was where we wanted it but the soil was a little tight and the core chemistry needed some help.” The field was amended with Earth- Works Renovate Plus, a construction amendment that contains dry kelp meal, compost and humic acids to aid the digestion of carbon in the soil. This product also uses rock minerals to provide sustainable phosphorus, potassium and trace elements, and provides porosity to allow air and water to move through the profile. “We didn’t do a lot of pre-plant work, we used Renovate Plus and a good starter fertilizer, we could have gone at this with a little less expense but the school district saw the value in the pre-plant program and we had a great establishment,” Moffitt said. The field was soded with big rolls of a fes- cue/bluegrass seed blend from a local sod producer in the fall of 2010 and will be ready for play by this spring. In evaluating the current soil tests it is clear Moffitt was right about the native soil and as can be seen by the soil profile the magnesium level on the standard soil test is very high and is driving the pH upward. It becomes difficult to manage a soil profile where all three major nutrient levels, cal- cium, magnesium and potassium, are high because we can’t effectively apply one to knock the other off the soil col- loid. Often when magnesium is high it is at the expense of calcium and lime- stone can be used to knock off the ex- cess Mg and bring the soil into balance. What can be seen on these soil tests is that both sulfur and sodium are high (ideal levels of both are in the low 20 ppm’s for sulfur and low 20 lbs/acre for sodium) which is an indication of the potential for a tight, compacted soil profile. When reviewing the water soluble www.stma.org SportsTurf 15 paste extract a few “red flags” show up specifi- cally the very low phosphorous readings, high bicarbonates and the very high sodium to potassium percentage. The phosphorous was addressed at pre-plant with the sustainable rock phosphate but will need to be a focus from a soluble standpoint when the mainte- nance program is established. High sodium levels, especially when percentages of sodium are higher than the percentage of potassium can lead to sodium induced wilt and root dys- functions. Bicarbonates can seal the soil sur- face leading toward localized dry spots and poor air movement through the root zone. A maintenance strategy using a flushing program of a high quality liquid humic acid product, 10 lbs per 1000 square feet of gyp- sum along with a good penetrating soil surfac-