April 2, 2005 4:55 pm - Syngenta's Primo

Primo by Syngenta

During the recent mini seminar in Minnesota this March, the morning topic was about Primo, and how superintendents where using it. There seemed to be a wide range of application rates with the product. Some superintendents were applying it at a rate of 0.08 oz/ 1000 sq.ft, while others where at 0.15 and still others at 0.023. As we broke into small discussion groups, I raised the question if Primo was influenced by water quality. No one in the group or University personel seemed to think so. Knowing that most herbicides and pesticides are influenced by water quality, we researched the question of Primo and water quality.

The first Thing we did was contact other turf consultants. Although all agreed that a lower pH water made a lot of sense, no one hand a concrete answer. We then turned to Syngenta's web page. There, under their own Material Safety Data Sheet, under item 12, Primo is listed as "stable in a sterile water, in the dark, at a pH between 5 &7". Therefore it appears that Primo is not only affected by water quality, but also by direct sunlight.

Our advice based upon Syngenta's own Materials Safety Data Sheet would be to acidity your spray tank before you add Primo. I would look at acidifying your tank down to a pH of 6.5. That should give the active ingredient in Primo a better chance of doing the job you want done.

Lowering the water pH should give you better results which should transfer to saving you money on your applications. Good Luck!

Sincerely,

Craig Paskvan
Paskvan Consulting
Take charge of your turf!

April 16, 2005 11:01 am - Ceramics and putting greens

If you are doing any top dressing or work on your greens with ceramics (Profile, Ecolite, Etc,) then what I have to say may want to to sit up and take notice. It appears that these ceramics are either made up of potassium or hold on to potassium very tightly and they are fooling the soils tests.

It appears from those superintendents that are using these ceramics, that the soils tests comes back showing very good levels of potassium in the rootmix. In fact some cases are showing that no potassium needs to be applied at all from the normal maintenance program, and yet, during the course of the growing season the plants show a potassium deficiency as well as on the standard tissues test.

The concern came about from consultants who where seeing this in the field and were questioning what was going on. Mark Flock who is the lab director at Brookside labs took some of this material and began to look at the effects of it. What he saw was that then these ceramics were subjected to a normal soils tests with the Mellic III extraction, the soils report showed very good levels of potassium. When the same samples where placed in a paste test, the test results showed very little potassium available in the soil solution. The work Mark Flock did appeared to show that the Mellic III extraction was strong enough to separate the potassium from the ceramics and show up on a soils report, but the water used in a paste test was not strong enough to separate the potassium from the ceramics. Apparently, the acid given off by the root hair is not strong enough either to separate the potassium from the ceramics.

If you are using or have been using ceramics on your greens and are seeing some of these same type of results, I would encourage you to supplement you normal soils testing program with some paste tests. The paste test will show you what is available in your soil solution for you plants and will help you make better decisions for your turf.

Sincerely,

Craig Paskvan

Paskvan Consulting
Take charge of your turf!