TURF FERTILISER.

Using the right turf fertilizer technology is crucial to getting the best results from your lawn fertilizer. 

As sports turf consultants and turf agronomists, we believe that turf nutrition is the cornerstone of turf management. This principle applies whether you use a sports turf fertilizer or lawn fertilizer.

The choice of lawn and turf fertilizer technology available, has made turf nutrition easier than ever before. However, this has also made it complicated to choose the right turf fertilizer.

Just like the human body, if you eat poorly, you will become unhealthy, more prone to disease and not perform at your best. This principle applies to a lawn, golf course or in a heavily used stadium. 

There are other less obvious benefits of getting your turf nutrition right:

• Less disease means significant chemical savings. It is cheaper to get your turf nutrition right by using the right lawn fertilizer than by spraying a fungicide. 
• Applying a turf fertilizer is a lot safer than spraying turf chemicals.
• Correct nutrition means your turf uses water more efficiently due to a deeper root network.
• Your lawn and turf look better.

As turf and lawn fertilizer suppliers, we have a wide range of fertilizer technology. This ranges from mini prill lawn fertilizers ideal for use on golf greens to fairway and sports turf fertilizer.

The following explains how nitrogen turf fertilizer works, and where it is best to use them.

Magnesium turf fertilizers.

How to choose a good fertilizer.

What are Slow release fertilizers and What are your options?

Quick-Release Sports Turf Fertilizer

Straight NPK’s:

‘Straight’ lawn and turf fertilizers are the low-cost options. These turf fertilizers tend to have a high salt index (burn potential) and can damage turf if not immediately watered in. They also cause growth surges, which means you mow more often.

Water solubles:

These are higher quality than ‘straights’. They are on the expensive side and are also prone to hardening or “caking”. 

To overcome this, manufacturers use anti-caking agents that can be abrasive to spray equipment.

However, an advantage of the water solubles is that they allow “spoon-feeding” of turf. Spoon feeding means you apply a little and often so turfgrass is fed what it needs and when it needs it. 

Bearing this in mind, some manufacturers incorporate a low percentage of surfactant to increase the leaf uptake of any foliar turf or lawn fertilizer.

Enhanced Efficiency sports turf fertiliser (EEFs).

EEF‘s limit nutrient losses and so improve nutrient use efficiency. You can divide this fertiliser technology into two groups: Synthetic slow-release turf and lawn fertilisers and nitrification and urease inhibitors, like Alzon Neo N 46-0-0.

Slow-release sports turf fertiliser.

IBDU and urea-formaldehyde turf fertilisers come under this heading. For more information check out this book.  

Table showing commonly used Enhanced Efficiency sports turf fertilizer (EEFs).

Liquids:

Liquid sports turf and lawn fertilizer gives an instant growth and colour response. This happens because with this fertilizer technology nutrients are immediately available, and taken up through the roots or leaves. Use liquid turf fertilizer:

• When turf is not growing at its maximum level, such as in the middle of summer, is when liquid foliar turf fertilizer applications are really efficient. 
• Before warm-season turf dormancy and lastly
• If you want to avoid mower pick up of turf fertilizer on closely mown turf.

The main drawback of liquid turf and lawn fertilizers is that they mostly do not have any longevity. There are, however, some slow-release liquid turf fertilizers now on the market.

We believe in getting the best of both worlds by using both liquid turf fertilizers and granular products. The results gained in combination are better than relying on one approach alone.

Slow-release Liquid sports turf fertiliser.

Liquid slow-release fertilizer technology available is available under several trade names like Fertech®, Sirflor®, and Nitrosert®. This fertilizer technology has the following characteristics when used as a lawn fertilizer or a turf fertiliser:

• Firstly, longevities of up to six to eight weeks;
• Secondly, low burn potential;
• Thirdly, a high tank degree of tank mix compatibility.
• Only the nitrogen is slow release. 

You can apply slow-release liquid nitrogen as a spray application onto turfgrass and as the nitrogen source in mixed NPK liquid turf fertilizers.

Organics:

Poultry manure and organic fertilizer from bio-waste, are a low-cost alternative fertilizer technology to synthetic sports turf fertiliser. However, organic turf fertilizer can have issues with odour and weed seed content.

The salt index of organic fertilizer can also be an issue. The high salt index is due to bulking up broiler chickens with salt. As broiler chickens grow, they are fed a high-salt diet. The broiler chickens then drink more water and put on weight faster. The result is they get to market faster. This salt then passes into their droppings.

No matter what the marketing says, if there are claims about only using free-range manure in their organic fertilizer these are highly debatable. I mean in all seriousness Iis there enough free-range poultry manure in Australia to meet the demand for these fertilizers?

Another major problem with organic fertilizer is that it has a highly variable analysis. You can’t produce a consistent fertilizer analysis if you only use manure.

Organic fertilizer has a low nitrogen content, and this is below 3-5%. Organic fertilizer almost always contains phosphorus.

The final point about this fertilizer technology is that anyone who uses poultry manure fertilisers to do the right thing for the environment actually isnt!

Poultry manure based fertilizers are a massive contributor to global warming due to carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions.