www.stma.org August 2016 | SportsTurf 21
Time for another quote from Sports
Fields: "…seek first the health of the turf
and its enfolding culture, and all the rest
(playability, economy, aesthetics) will be
added onto it."
The Soil Food Web, a sustainable
cycle that begins and ends with "dead
material" that is used by microbiology to
store, release and manage chemistry. Ever
heard of lichen, bacteria, fungi, protozoa,
nematodes, and mites? Soil organisms
that make nitrogen available to plants
are predators of fungi or bacteria. The
interaction of bacteria and their predators
and fungi and their predators produce
as much as 80% of the plant available
nitrogen that occurs in the soil.
So how does fertilizer get into the plant
anyway? Water solution. What do we
know about some of our weeds and less
desirable grasses? They don't require the
same conditions as our preferred grasses
do they? Many times these weeds and
less desirable grasses do well with less
pore space or oxygen. Why is that? When
we converse about chemical elements
in the soil we usually realize that ratio
balance is as important as individual
quantity. pH is usually affected by these
ratios and sometimes the pore space as
this may affect anaerobic and aerobic
activity that does bind or solubilize
elements thus restricting or making them
available. Just as different plants prefer
different pH they also thrive or struggle
in different microbiological ratios. For
instance finding fungi in the forest is not
uncommon. Trees, particularly conifers,
prefer a higher fungus to bacteria ratio.
Weeds enjoy 100% bacteria or a low
level of fungi to bacterial ratio. Desirable
grasses and row crops tend to do well with
a balanced ratio of fungi to bacteria.
The point is, mineralization only occurs
because of biological processes. When
biology is functioning properly, water
and fertilization use is reduced and plant
production is increased. Bacteria convert
ammonium to nitrite and then to nitrate
by removing hydrogen and then replacing
it with oxygen. Nitrate does not exist in
the soil without the soil microbiology
