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Compost tea shows promise

Golf Course News, Dec 2002 by Overbeck, Andrew

2002 NEWSMAKERS

WOODBURY, NJ. - As more superintendents study organic golf course maintenance practices, compost tea has emerged as viable alternative to a chemical-only approach.

While the compost tea technique has been around for more than a century, today's higher-tech version "brews" compost to create a concentrated "tea" that delivers beneficial microbes and low levels of nutrients to turfgrass.

Evidence at this point is strictly anecdotal, but superintendents using compost tea report less disease pressure, less need for fertilization and irrigation and all-around healthier turf.

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Last February, Golf Course News interviewed Woodbury (NJ.) Country Club superintendent Charles Clarke about the results he had gotten after two years of using compost tea. Clarke stuck with his compost tea regimen this year and recorded a third successful season with his "home brew" despite drought conditions and high disease pressure.

"It was a good year with compost tea," said Clarke. "We bought a bigger brewer and we were able to reduce fungicide use again. We only did five curative sprays for dollar spot control on the fairways as opposed to the usual 11 to 12. We also reduced fertilizer on fairways to two pounds of nitrogen.

"On the greens we had no outbreaks, but we did have dollar spot pressure," he continued. "We sprayed curatively and we were able to increase our spray intervals. Overall we reduced fungicide use by 30 percent."

Clark applies five gallons of tea per acre every seven days, but backed off to every 14 days this fall. He had no anthracnose, very little brown patch and pythium and had no algae on his greens.

"I am still tentative with compost tea," said Clarke, "and we are not chemical-free by any means. But we have been able to truly implement an IPM program and I attribute that to the tea."

Seeing Clarke's success, Todd Struse at LuLu Temple Country Club in North Hills, Pa, started a compost tea program this summer.

"We have a real bad anthracnose problem here and it is because of an imbalance in the soil chemistry," he said. "We want to reduce our budget by reducing use of chemicals, nematicides and fertilizers."

Since he is just beginning the program, Struse is applying compost tea at a 35gallon-per-acre rate every week. While it was too soon to see results this season, Struse did benefit from another of Clarke's techniques - topdressing tees with compost during the winter.

"I put down a heavy layer on the tees in January and let it rain in and then blew off the debris," Struse said. "The compost provided enough nutrients so that I didn't have to fertilize them until September."

Clarke topdressed roughs, six tees and two fairways with compost last winter and noticed that it helped combat drought conditions.

"We have a mixture of bluegrass and ryegrass in the roughs and they went dormant later and bounced back earlier. The areas we didn't get to went dormant right off," he said.

Clarke plans to topdress the whole course this year.

COMPOST TEA CATCHING ON?

If compost tea provides at least some benefits, why aren't more superintendents aren't using it? Clarke said the lack of university research is the biggest problem.

"A lot of guys won't accept it until a Rutgers or a Penn State or an NC State says `Yes this is the way to go.' Unfortunately this is a grass-roots thing and there is no one with the money to pay for a study," said Clarke.

"So far, anecdotal evidence is the only way [information on] compost tea gets out there,"

Compost tea shows promise

Golf Course News, Dec 2002 by Overbeck, Andrew

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