Fertilizer Use 2014

It has been a while since my last post. In my defense I have been a bit busy. In September my wife and I welcomed our second son, Avery, into the world. I was also busy working towards my search and rescue Rope Team Leader certification. This involved years of training and a test that lasted 20 hours!

It's that time of the year where things are slow and I begin to look back at my records, reflect, and make changes to better my operation for the next season.

The first thing I have looked at is my fertilizer records. I have made great strides to reduce the amount of fertilizer applied, the cost of the fertilizer and the time taken to apply this fertilizer. Last year I started using the MLSN guidelines and was amazed with the huge impact this made. This year the impact was less dramatic but I still saw reductions in almost all categories.

For those that don't know. We have 0.4ha of poa greens, 0.3 ha of bent/rye tees and 4.5ha of rye/bluegrass fw.

Here is the raw data:

Total Product (Kg)
Area	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Greens	1043	1066	1160	537	842	424
Tees	770	590	478	253	379	213
Fairways	4975	4663	3991	2295	1161	1664
Total Product	6788	6319	5629	3085	2382	2301
Total Cost	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Greens	$4,132.00	$3,785.00	$1,480.00	$404.00	$707.00	$387.00
Tees	$1,363.00	$1,104.00	$980.00	$463.00	$582.00	$231.00
Fairways	$6,894.00	$5,922.00	$6,900.00	$3,566.00	$1,250.00	$1,658.00
Total Costs	$12,389.00	$10,811.00	$9,360.00	$4,433.00	$2,539.00	$2,276.00
Total Time	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Greens	40	35	52.5	135	34	34
Tees	18	22.5	17.5	20	22.5	13.5
Fairways	24	18	21	18	25	37.5
Total Time	82	75.5	91	173	81.5	85

The total mass of fertilizer applied this year remained almost exactly the same. I applied almost half the product on the greens but saw a slight increase in fairway fertilizer as I tried to battle dollar spot this summer. The tees also saw a reduction of almost half year over year.

Costs were also down slightly with trends similar to the amounts of fertilizer applied to each respective area of the course.

 Labor was up just slightly as I made a few extra fertilizer applications on the fairways this summer.

Total nutrient amounts applied are as follows:

	G/m2
Area	N	P	K	S	Ca	Mg	Fe
Greens	19.26	1.89	4.61	14.62	6.18	0.00	1.56
Tees	21.25	0.00	0.00	5.16	5.00	2.50	1.67
Fairways	11.00	0.00	0.00	5.24	0.00	1.50	2.00

Now none of this matters without results.

I don't plan on making too many additional changes for next year. I plan to do more soil tests this coming spring and will adjust to stay just above the MLSN guidelines.