Andrew Turnbull is the owner of SouthWest Agronomy Ltd (SWA) located in Tavistock, England. His company offers advisory and consultancy services to golf courses and sports turf facilities.
One issue the company faced was how to prove to their customers that their recommended treatments were actually having a positive influence on the soil microbes. Other than the obvious visual effects of the quality of the playing surface, which can often be open to interpretation, Andrew wanted to prove that other factors have improved performance such as extra or different maintenance operations. Andrew found regular soil microbial analysis to be expensive with only a few laboratories locally performing accurate testing.
“microBIOMETER® changed the game!” – Andrew Turnbull
Now, in addition to comprehensive nutrient and microscopic analysis, the company incorporates regular microbial testing with microBIOMETER® into their program. This enables them to give their clients confidence that they are implementing changes that not only have a positive visual effect, but a measurable and direct one as well.
About SouthWest Agronomy Ltd (SWA).SWA focuses on the little understood aspect of how turfgrass plants interact with the rootzone biology and how the plant’s metabolism is affected by biotic and abiotic stresses. When a turfgrass plant is healthy it excretes carbohydrates, proteins and other exudates that feed microbes. This increases mineralization of nutrients, enhances disease protection, and causes organic matter recycling. SWA’s Bio Nutrition Program restores the balance between the plant and soil microbes which is lost when turfgrass management relies on chemical fertilizers, and/or is under continual stress from maintenance operations, and/or has less than optimum environmental conditions (e.g. heat, cold, shade), and regular use by players.
Graham Mackie, Golf Course Manager at Edzell Golf Course in the U.K., has been using microBIOMETER® to monitor the health of the soil on the greens. Here is what he had to say about our soil test.
“I really like microBIOMETER®. It is simple to use and for the first time I can get baseline readings to see what is effective and what is not in influencing soil biology. As a golf course manager I believe that swinging the F: B ratio in favor of the fungi will allow the dominant grasses to be the desirable perennials.
I took microBIOMETER® readings of the main 18- hole course as well as the small 9-hole course and the readings correlated with what I expected. The 9-hole greens have more poa annua, therefore, were more bacterial dominant. I also took a reading of an area of untouched fescue rough which was very fungal dominant, as expected. It was great to have this theory confirmed. I am now looking forward to see if and how I can swing the balance to more fungal dominance on the greens.”
A BIG thank you to Graham for sharing his testing experience with us!
