Experts’ Insights: Pro tips for surfactant use

Playing a key role in soil and turf health through water retention and distribution, experts say building a proper soil surfactant program that is specific to your course is crucial. Understanding the products and when to apply them is one thing, but knowing how each new chemistry impacts a course’s particular turf and soil type in different climates can be even trickier.

“Ask yourself, ‘What am I trying to achieve with this application? What is my goal?’” says Matt Fleetwood, R&D and technical service manager at Aquatrols. “‘I have rain coming — what’s the best chemistry?’”

Fleetwood recommended reaching out to distributors for help and questions when building the perfect soil surfactant program, but beyond that, we asked our industry experts for their best tips and tricks for making the most of these key products.

Numerator Technologies

Taylor Turner
CEO

There is a reason turf types are separated into two categories: warm and cool season. We always recommend a preventative program for both warm- and cool-season (turf) to stay in front of the disruptive symptoms. Yet, generally speaking, warm-season grasses normally are under longer and more days of higher E.T. rate requirements, so they require more applications within a calendar year. The honest truth is if the climate is hot, dry and/or windy, more applications of soil surfactants will be needed regardless of being warm- or cool-season grasses. Keep in mind, trying to ‘catch up’ with a treatment strategy when symptoms of repellency appear is a losing game — getting in front of symptoms is always the best.

Aquatrols

Matt Fleetwood
R&D and technical service manager

Superintendents typically start surfactants in the summertime and apply it monthly into fall, and then they’ll stop. But what we’re seeing some higher-end superintendents do, and even just some superintendents that are dialed in with their management, they’re starting to apply these year-round. These soil surfactants don’t break down over the winter. You are allowing that soil in the winter time to be charged with these soil surfactants so they can manage water during that wintertime. And then coming into the spring, we’re seeing better green up from these plots, and you’re getting on your soil surfactant program earlier. So, you’re driving these roots down more, and then when they get into the summer, they can handle stress better.

Plant Food Co.

Tom Weinert
Vice president of sales

Every single golf course superintendent has a different idea of what their expectations are from a particular product — like a wetting agent — and how to achieve that, and I think a wetting agent is one of those products that takes a longer time to get settled in on because there is so much variation in climate. Today it’s 90 degrees and raining, but tomorrow it’s 75 degrees and sunny and dry, and we have a different set of circumstances. Trying to pick a particular product that does everything for everyone is incredibly difficult, and that’s why I recommend using flexible, short-term wetting agents. It’s all about providing the control that users are looking for to deal with the circumstances of the next five to seven days.

Related Articles

Using heat vision to aid water-use predictions

Key factors affecting nutrient levels and algae growth in stormwater ponds