By Michael Gardner, Senior Director of Huma Gro® Turf Sales at Bio Huma Netics, Inc.
[Note: This article first appeared in the February 2018 issue of Tee Times Golf Guide Magazine.]
Have you ever stood on the first tee box of a golf course, looking over the vast real estate in front of you? The fairway is manicured, mowed to perfection, and lush green. There’s nothing more beautiful or inviting than the perfect fairway, and it can be the visual centerpiece of an entire golf course. This is where golfers make comments such as “what a beautiful hole” and “great hole,” and where superintendents find their success or failure.
Superintendents have many challenges in supplying their patrons with this wonderful experience. Every day presents a new assault on that perfect fairway from environmental stresses and the stress from heavy play. Defending against those assaults within the constrictions of a budget often requires an innovative approach.
Players’ expectations of a perfect fairway are sometimes very different from the superintendents’ expectations. Players may be looking for deep green fairways that are freshly mowed and manicured. They may also be looking for firm conditions that provide maximum rollout and no divots. On these same fairways, a superintendent will be focusing on many of these same issues, but is doing so from an agronomic point of view. How much stress can my grass handle from low mowing heights, cart traffic, and soil compaction? Is my irrigation set up for optimal coverage? Is my soil biology healthy enough to produce turf that can withstand these conditions? Are my nutrients being tied up in my soil, resulting in turf stress due to nutrient deficiencies? Are my soil conditions in a state that can resist disease pressure?
So many questions, so many challenges. I once heard a club member say to a superintendent, “Why can’t the fairways look as good as my front yard?” I wanted to go over and take 20 nice deep divots out of his yard . . . and not replace them, of course. Let’s see how that yard compares to the course now!
Huma Gro® Turf offers superintendents a wide range of turf and soil solutions to help them meet many of their most daunting challenges. Each of our products is powered by our proprietary Micro Carbon Technology®, a liquid plant nutrition carrier based on very small organic carbon particles that gets more nutrient into the turf, faster, than with other forms of fertilizer. These carbon particles aren’t only a great source of carbon for the soil and grass, they supercharge nutrient efficiency, soil health, turf growth and resiliency, and much, much more.
Huma Gro® Turf provides multiple programs and categories of programs for superintendents to use as tools to help a golf course achieve its full potential. These liquid products can be easily mixed together with no clogging of your equipment. One of these categories is our Fairways Program.
The Huma Gro® Turf “Fairway Program” is based on five fundamental modes of action:
- Soil health: achieving a proper balance of soil biology and carbon-to-oxygen ratios through a natural and sustainable approach.
- Properly managed turf growth: specific plant hormone activation to create horizontal growth resulting in full, consistant fairways and rapid recovery from divots and aerating—along with increased root growth that also increases nutrient uptake and overall plant health.
- Balanced nutrition: we offer nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) and 8 micronutrients that are easily and rapidly taken up by the turf and will not be tied up in the soil or leached away.
- Desired color without excessive growth.
- Products that do not need to be immediately watered in.
Because of the vast size of most fairways, Huma Gro® Turf has combined these modes of action into three liquid products that are easily mixed together in a spray tank. Curiosity™ provides proper soil health and a well-balanced nutrient package that includes N, P, K, and 8 micronutrients in one product; Breakout® minimizes top growth and promotes horizontal turf growth—which results in a more uniform and dense fairway with divots filling in quicker; and Turf Iron™ helps superintendents manage turf color with more exactness.
These programs can easily be customized to meet the turf and soil needs—along with the budgets—of just about any golf course.
Huma Gro® Turf represents a new technology (45 years in the making) that helps superintendents manage many of their most challenging turf needs. This is a new way of thinking—getting away from the harsh chemicals and conventional ways of previous generations. A complete listing of Huma Gro® Turf special programs can be found at https://humagroturf.com/special-turf-programs/.