How should I deal with summer stress? It’s a question I get asked a lot, and I try to explain that there’s no single specific answer. Rather, there’s a list of things that can help alleviate the symptoms. While there’s no way to totally stop summer stress, the following things will give your course a major edge and help you get out ahead of it.
Help Turf Recover from Mechanical Practices
Cultural practices like topdressing and verticutting help you maximize green speeds, increase surface firmness, and improve playability. However, these practices can be very stressful for your turf, making it more susceptible to disease and causing the stand to thin out. Foliar-Pak CSi L offers a leaf-absorbed form of silicon, which strengthens cell walls (especially in the cuticle), resulting in a more robust stand that can withstand wear and tear. Also, it promotes more upright blade growth, which leads to increased density and improved cut quality. This allows you to reduce the frequency of mechanical practices, reduce stress on your course, and make things easy on your maintenance team.
Deal With Drought
Drought stress is another significant summer issue. CSi L is great at also combating drought stress thanks to a unique amino acid that acts as an osmolyte. The amino acid enhances the plant’s ability to maintain proper hydration during drought and salt stress conditions. The improved hydration also minimizes heat stress damage.
Keep Up With Hydration
To keep your turf properly hydrated, I recommend Gold Standard 45. It helps maintain hydration by rapidly metabolizing amino acids into osmolytes, which keep vacuoles full and helps maintain turgor pressure in cells and grass blades. The amino acids in Gold Standard also combine with phosphate to form phospholipid membranes, strengthening cell walls during stress. Gold Standard 45’s amino acids are quickly converted to defense structures and antioxidants that work with phosphite to enhance the plant’s systemic acquired resistance.
By keeping cells turgid, keeping cell walls intact and robust, and helping the plant fight stressors, it can photosynthesize and create energy more effectively. By creating energy, the plant can continue its proper and regular life cycle and keep out of dormancy. Essentially, Gold Standard keeps your course green!
Help Turf Handle Stress and Store Energy
Plenty of biotic and abiotic stressors attack turf in the summer, and a better osmolyte presence can help your course function at a higher level under these conditions. Foundation Forty loads osmolytes into cell vacuoles and stomatal guard cells to up the plant’s defensive capabilities. A stronger, more vibrant plant with better functioning stomates will also absorb more systemic tank mix chemistries. This is especially so for plants that are under significant stress.
Foundation Forty also delivers abundant levels of amino acids (40% amino acid content). They increase nitrogen fixation, chlorophyll production, and carbon fixation, which builds up energy reserves. These reserves enable your course to better withstand summer stress, and superintendents who’ve used Foundation Forty have noted seeing improved color and increased stand density.
Support Turf Health and Performance
Plants burn through a significant amount of potassium as they work overtime to respire under high heat and humidity. So, it’s important to keep plants full of it. Armament K provides potassium for both foliar and root feeding. Plus, Armament K’s Armament technology frees up nutrients in the soil, giving plants more nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and micronutrient availability.
Speaking of health, another crucial nutrient is calcium. It’s deeply involved in cell division and elongation, and it also strengthens plants’ cell walls. Plus, it’s vital to the functioning of growing points and keeps cell membranes functioning properly, ensuring the plant can keep producing protein for growth and recovery. Supplementing calcium during stressful periods is another great way to support your course’s health. Foliar-Pak Calcium (7% Ca) is a well-protected calcium source engineered for maximum foliar uptake, ensuring plants quickly receive its benefits.
Boost Nutrient Uptake
While superintendents should, of course, pay attention to the primary macronutrients, don’t discount manganese and magnesium. Manganese keeps energy production going under extreme light and temperature. It also helps plants maintain color, growth, and recovery when stress chokes out normal metabolism. It can also help your course withstand disease pressure and limit heat-induced tissue damage. Magnesium protects the plant’s photosynthetic capacity and color, improves resilience and recovery, and helps the plant maintain balanced nutrition.
Foliar-Pak Manganese and Magnesium supply those respective nutrients, and also improve uptake. AminoPrecise technology enhances the nutrients in these products by fully chelating each ion with targeted amino acids, supercharging uptake and flow within the plant to improve performance when stress strikes.
Accomplish More This Summer
When you can resist the damaging effects of summer stress, you keep your course beautiful, keep players satisfied with conditions, and free up plenty of time and labor for other tasks around the course. Foliar-Pak products can help get you there. Reach out to your ATS rep to learn more about how these products can improve your course’s vitality.
– written by John Gruneisen, Foliar-Pak Midwest Territory Sales Manager
