Saving $$ on Maintenance

[Bradley Anderson]

At my last course I had an old SDI sprayer that plumbed the circulation water up to the strainer basket, so that when you added your water soluble fertilizers to the tank, the strainer screened any chunks out, as the circulation water dissolves it. Simple with no slurries needed.

I had it set up to where I could weigh out whatever custom analysis I wanted using urea, mono ammonium phosphate, sulfate of potash, ferrous sulfate, mono potassium phosphate, potassium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, magnisol, etc. and it all went in to solution very easily. Anyways, the cost was less than a third of the prepackaged liquid formulations and there is NO WAY you could ever tell the difference - especially when you are using growth regulators. And it was safe,. And there was no extra labor involved because it went out with the standard fungicide applications. I think it even made the fungicides more effective.

I have been told that you can go all the way up to 1 lb of water soluble product per gallon of water, but I don't think I ever put more then 1 pound per 2.75 gallons solution.

Now I have a Toro Sprayer and it takes forever to put water solubles in to solution.

Well as far as I know, SDI is the only sprayer that is set up so that you can spray water solubles easily. But if you havethe right sprayer you can save a lot of money and have some really nice turf for the bargain. Heck I don't think the grass knows the difference.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Brad,
I primarily use soluble fert on my fwys and since I have 80 acres, that's a lot of loads. But, take a 1000 gallon cone tank, get a few three way valves and hook up to a 220v 2hp pump and a 40 gallon cone mix tank and it becomes very easy to mix up 3 loads at a time.

No way, and I mean no way, pre packaged products can compare price wise with base materials, but sometimes you do have to make a small investment to make it work.  Again, if you take it one load of base vs. one load of pre-packaged, the difference may not seem like much, but when it takes 10 loads to spray your course and you’re doing it on 2-3 week intervals all year long you will spend less with base materials.

One thing to keep in mind when your looking to save $$$ on maintenance. Rarely do you hit the home run where you make one change and knock 20% off your expenses. It's about hitting a lot of singles and saving in everything you do, because even though we are required to save, the conditions can not show it or you will not last. Everyone agrees we need to spend less, and most say it's OK if conditions drop a notch, but it really never is. Expectations remain high regardless of economic realities.

[Don_Mahaffey]

but do we honestly think the public will embrace this? Will they care enough about Round-up sprayed bunker edges...

JS,
Here's one pic off of Mike Nuzzo's blog of a Wolf Point bunker that has never been edged with a string trimmer. We do run a fly mow around them once in a while to get to the grass we can't mow with larger mowers, but no edging the bermuda turf with machines. My hope is our "lips" will develop into what I saw at Riviera before the bunkers were updated there. If you keep spray the bermuda back, and it does take some practice to get it right, you end up with these lips that look natural and get thick and gnarly. This bunker is in it's second season and you can start to see the turf around the edges forming the type of look I like.

[Ian Larson]

Don,

I guess with fertilizer, like most things, you get what you pay for.

Comparing apples to apples here.....

Raw elemental nutrient fertilizers will most times beat the price of getting a jug of concentrated liquid. It only makes sense that its like that. The bags of raw material straight from the fert plant is exactly what the fancy fertilizer companies will use to make their product.

Obviously the things that contribute to the fancy fertilizer company charging more per jug than the fertilizer plants bag is...

1. Its concentrated
2. Its chelated
3. Its packaged

The fancy fert company is also getting a HUGE price break in buying the fert from the mine or plant because they are buying tens of thousands of tons per year compared to the single golf course superintendent getting a pallette every now and then. They're already beating a superintendents price straight from the plant giving them the room to concentrate and chelate the product and passing on the costs of doing so to the customers.

The reality to this is that I can go out right now and get a case of 21-0-0 ammonium sulfate liquid thats concentrated and chelated for around 100 bucks. It will take me 1 minute to put it in a spray tank and by the time I get to the first green its diluted and in solution ready to spray out at least a tenth of a pound of Ammoniacal Nitrogen and sulfur per 1000.

If I tried to save money by choosing 20 lb bags of straight ammonium sulfate from the plant I am going to have to also buy the chelating agent on top of that. Im also going to spend at least 30 minutes more cutting and dumping all the bags and giving the mix the time needed to make sure it all goes into solution. For Greens I dont see the savings when Im buying 8 bags to the 1 case of liquid, Im also buying a chelating agent and more man hours are needed to mix. For doing something like fairways? Sure...I hate putting anything on fairways but wetting agent and Primo. If I DO have to I use cheap base fert everytime out of the pre mix tank.

I think superintendents need to look further than the initial cost of the fertilizer they use as what they measure their fertilizer savings against. Packaged fertilizer from the fancy fertilizer companies may NEVER beat the cost of a bag straight from the plant. But a bag straight from the plant will NEVER beat the efficiency and the efficacy of the fert in the jug which ultimately saves the super more money than the upfront cost in the end. Base elements may mix easy, they may go on the green easy and they are even easy on the budget....initially. But how much was volatilized, leached away or just sitting in the soil because it was something that the grass plant doesn't want to swallow?

When I was 16 I bought my first car which was an old subaru station wagon for $500. It got the job done. It got me from point A to point B but it ate up gas and oil like crazy and it DEFINETELY didnt get me laid!





 

[Don_Mahaffey]

Ian, where can I buy this product? I've never heard of chelated, concentrated 21-0-0. If a 5 gallon case can take the place of 10 bags for $100 I'm all over it. Please let me know who I have to call. 

[Jake Straub]

I'm jumping in here for the first time into waters that I have scoped out for 10 years but I feel like the context might be right.  Well here goes, I like the thinking of some of the supers that have posted on ways to cut costs on their maintenance practices so I guess the one question that I have is have any of you gone to the kitchen yet?  Why not some straight granulated sugar as your chelating agent and also a very inexpensive microbial food source and follow it up with a shot of molasses the following spray.  Seems to me like we need to employ the microbes to do as much work as possible for us in this tight economy and last time I check the going rate for those guys is pretty cheap considering they take very little time off, unless we make them take time off.  

One of the best/cheapest practices that can be introduced is the addition of some good Carbon sources to the profile so we can create the environment needed to change microbial populations from pathogenic to beneficial, over time cutting back on disease.  The second benefit is the water holding ability of Carbon and this helps with both labor and irrigation costs.  The final benefit is that Carbon is needed for all living organisms, so as we increase our microbial populations we can change our organic matter (which can be detrimental at times) into functioning humus so nutrients that are put down are stabilized until needed by the plant, hopefully cutting down on fertilizer inputs.

Sorry may have gone to far on a first post but wanted to weigh in.

[Todd Bell]

IMO,

"Low N Fertility" ~ The aggressive nature of the new Bentgrass varieties play a role

Saving $$ on Maintenance ~ minimizing fruitless labor

[Michael Rossi]

JSPayne


What are some of the things that you have had success with when reducing expenditures?