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good morning. Welcome to the Tri-crestopistemology on Tuesday morning from Lexington, Kentucky. I'm so glad everybody could make it. It's the internet surfer and Charles and Connecticut, Cape Monica and Randy. We've got Bulgaria, we've got Northeast, United States, Joseph Kala. The membership's up to almost 70 members. Now we have two new members in the last couple of days. Rich Zalunga, a transition Brady and a sort of you know stripper man. Good morning everybody. On Tuesday morning we go over a video and just to just a comments video. I'll watch a video and I just comment on it as I play it. If you're new to Tri-crestopistemology is the study of Tri-crest knowledge, how do we know what we know about Tri-crest science? We normally explore the scientific literature try to provide some evidence to support our management practices. That's on Monday morning for the members only show at 10 a.m. and Thursday evening for the public at 9 p.m. and then on Tuesday we do this show. So we are going to... I think it's working. Yeah, we're going to get started. Good morning Mason. Today's video we're going over a video on soil testing and the video... I had several videos lined up and then this one popped up on my algorithm and I put it at the front of the list and then another video popped up. So I'm going to do that one next week of the same gentleman and I wanted to go over this one in particular because from this from my perspective I see two things in this video. One is a genuine sincere interest in understanding and two a charlatan and a BS artist providing misinformation and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. I'm doing him a service by saying he's misinforming the other gentleman because if he knows what he's saying is incorrect then he's disinforming him. In other words he's lying if he knows the truth. So I'm doing him a service and assuming that he doesn't know actually what's going on and he's simply spewing BS which would be misinformation as opposed to disinformation. Okay, so I'm going to show this video in common on as we go. It's only 16 minutes long and I commented as we go so who knows how long it'll take. Let's see, get this up here. The video comes from a channel called Ryan Nor Longcare and the title is reading my soil test report with John Perry of Longcology. We're going to play the introduction and it started. Here we go. All right, well today I thought we'd take a look at my soil tests that we just did a couple weeks ago here. I have both of them back from a couple different labs mainly out of just curiosity on seeing what they were going to look like compared to each other and I have Mr. John Perry joining me today to look over some of these things. So thank you John. Oh I'm just happy to be here buddy. So when you get a soil test back. So if the audio is screwy let me know. I'll do what I kind of my end. It's always a game on my end to try to figure out how the audio sounds coming from that somebody else's video. But please let me know in the chat if it's too over saturated or or it's too low. I'll do what I can. So Ryan Nor who I don't know if I recall correctly and he would know if this is true. When I first started doing YouTube stuff the first show I was on was the grass factor and I really thought it was creative and I wanted to do more of that. I thought well this is creative. This seems like it's reaching a number of people and I reached out to a couple other channels. One of them was the one with elevated landscapes with Cam and was his name Rob. I'm sorry I should know their names. I apologize and I did their show and I reached out to a couple other ones and I think could be wrong. I think I reached out to Ron Ryan Nor and he said he's that's not really what his channel does and you know it was very polite and I said okay cool and so I kept looking at other opportunities and that's how eventually I turned into developing my own channel because I wanted to be a little bit more active in producing you know content about turfgrass management in the end in a way that is evidence-based. So I could be wrong but I think I reached out to Ryan once. I don't know him but I do like the way he presents his information. He does seem sincere and genuine in his interest of learning what is true. So this is Ryan Nor if you don't know who he is and the other gentleman's name is John Perry. They're gonna talk about a soil test and the question was what do you first look at in the soil test? Let's see what John Perry has to say. Let's just kind of start with where you would you know there's a lot of information on there. There's a lot of stuff on graphs and all that so it might be a little bit overwhelming. Where would you start to just kind of digest that information? Okay so just so we're on the same page. Where do I start? Does anybody want to take a guess where I start on a soil test? A lot of the members are here today. There's some subscribers here as well. Where do you think I would start on a soil test? The first thing that I would do or say to someone who presents me with some date on a soil test report. I'll give you a second or two if you want to reply. But I don't start on a soil test report. I don't start on the numbers. I don't look at the soil test report at all at first. What I want to know is what is a turf look like? Oh Dr. Shaddak, can you tell me if I have enough potassium or phosphorus in my almost in my soil from my soil test report? Can you tell if my pH is too high or too low? Do I need to apply lime or sulfur? Here's a soil test report. My first question back is what is your turf look like? Have you had any pre-existing conditions? Are you trying to keep track of something over time? What's your pH? Three and a half last year and you had a horrible turf and now you're applying lime and it's four and a half this year and the turf is looking better. I mean those sorts of things. Yeah bad days. Why do you even need a soil test? That's oftentimes that's my approach. How do you how do you know you need to actually start chasing these numbers on a soil test? What does turf look like? That's the question. So the very first thing I ever do is I want photographs or I want confirmation from the end user. What does your turf look like? And whether their turf is acceptable or not is entirely in the eye of the beholder and the eye of the client. So my front lawn is completely unacceptable to most people. I was working with my neighbor yesterday and he wants a lawn that looks better than my lawn. He has a similar situation in terms of his soil and so he's my front lawn is not acceptable to him but it's acceptable to me. So if it's acceptable to me well what does it matter what soil test report has on it? Does it make any difference? Yeah and John Duckins says why are you testing? That's the first question. What is your objective? What are you trying to accomplish by soil testing? Because if your turf looks good and you're going to show and I'm assuming that the soil test report is from Mr. Nor's front lawn or his lawn. His lawn's immaculate. It looks like a golf course. When we rate turf grass on quality from one to nine, nines almost never exist. They're extremely rare. A nine is a flawless sword, no disease, perfect cut, no weeds, no discoloration, everything's perfect, perfect density, perfect color, everything. His lawn is pretty dang close to a nine. So if your lawn looks like that, the argument can be made well. Yes it looks like that but I've had a pre-existing condition. That's the reason I asked you have any pre-existing conditions but if you don't have pre-existing conditions and your lawn looks perfect, why soil testing? Don't worry about soil tests. Your lawn's great. Don't worry about it. But like I said if you have numbers you're trying to keep track of over time then so be it. That's where I go. Let's see what John Perez said. Okay so I think first of all it's important to note that your soil test is there to be a road map. It should always be considered as a road map. You can't always fix everything in a single season and you need to look at your soil test as a basically a multi-year investment into the bank of nutrients in the soil. I'm not going to beat him over the head on that too much. That can be true. Yes I mean I don't look at it as a road map but if you're looking to manage things over time, you have pre-existing conditions then you are looking at what is occurring over several years to see if your management practices are resulting in a more acceptable turfgrass. The people who don't understand soil testing like this gentleman John, he'll say well the numbers are moving up or the numbers are moving down. I don't care about the numbers. That's chasing numbers. Don't chase numbers on a soil test. Chase turfgrass. Chase turfgrass performance. Chase turfgrass quality. And yes sometimes there's a correlation between the soil test numbers and turfgrass quality of course but I'm not overly concerned about numbers on a soil test unless you have a problem and we're trying to diagnose it and treat it and so forth. Okay but for the most part I mean he's fine with whatever he said there. I mean it's I don't look at it as a road map but I look at it as if there's a problem and I see something way off like sulfur is one and your turfgrass is yellow then it's not a road map it's a diagnostic tool is what it is. That's the way I would look at it. Are there is there something going on in your turf that's unacceptable and then there's some clarity on a soil test that can help guide you in terms of diagnosing the problem and treating it. That's that's the way I look at the soil test. So in my opinion there's no such thing as a bad soil test. Well I don't know what he means by that but I can show you a really bad soil test. I got a soil test from a friend of mine in Florida who's trying to grow grass on a brown field which is an old waste dump trying to grow it on the on the banks of this brown field to keep the soil intact keep it from eroding. He showed me the numbers. I was like good God where is this at? I mean I've never seen values that far off where sulfur is in the you know seven or eight hundred parts per million, may like three. You know and the calcium is one hundred parts per million and the manganese is one and the potassium is five or whatever I can't remember off top of my head what it was but it was exceedingly bad. I was like what is going on? The chances of you growing an acceptable turfgrass in that situation are incredibly low but it's on the edges of a brown field that the slopes of a of a waste dump basically. So they're not they don't their expectations are not Augusta National. They just want it to you know root down and hold it there. So their expectations are not very high but their potential for growing is extremely low. I don't think the potential for growth there is going to meet their expectations. So in that example that soil test was horrible. I mean it's awful. So that is you know a rare situation but it can definitely there's definitely you know bad soil tests. There's just a soil test. So don't look at it and freak out and think like oh there's something majorly wrong here or there or correct. Yeah again it's meant to be guidelines so. I don't know what he means by guidelines but I agree I wouldn't freak out on a soil test but when you see yellow turf and I'll you choose sulfur as example and sulfur is one or two. Don't freak out but just recognize that's very likely what the the the most limiting factor is most likely sulfur. So you would adjust your management practices accordingly in that situation where you see an unacceptable turf very likely it's a result of low sulfur and you would have either adjust your sulfur up using you know tasium sulfate or calcium sulfate or ammonium sulfate or something like that. So you know in the case of the soil test that you sent me so if we just kind of look at that straight out of the gate I am going to read straight down without looking at the graphs first so the graphs are there they're very helpful as I've stated before it's the fastest way to see what a limiting factor is in your soil. Yeah I don't find these graphs helpful at all just so you know and I'll explain why that is. These graphs are a result of what they should be if they're conducted properly or a result of proper correlation. In other words we know how much is in the soil and whether or not that amount is sufficient for turfgrass growth or not. Okay so the reason I don't have much confidence in these bars at all is because I have a great deal of confidence in my position that these weren't result these weren't created from a correlation. What is the the boron the correlation between boron and copper and iron and manganese and the zinc and the soil of melee 3 to turfgrass quality? What metric do they even use? Did they use turfgrass growth, nitrogen uptake, density and quality? You have to pick a metric to correlate. I would argue that the most most likely or most useful variable to correlate with soil test results is turf quality. But an argument can be made for growth rate if you're on sport turf or if you're on a practice fair or practice driving range the T-box of a practice drive range that might be growth rate that you're looking for not quality because you're trying to get that grass to grow in as fast as you can. But on a home long or you don't have a lot of damage maybe it's turfgrass quality. Okay so I don't even know what metric they used and I'm pretty confident that they didn't even do a correlation with manganese and zinc. What is the minimum, what is a critical manganese and zinc level on its soil for turfgrass quality? I don't know what that is and I'm pretty confident that they don't know either so I don't know where they got these values from these ranges from very high good medium low and all these things. They have a bar showing that it's you know you're in acceptable ranges or below acceptable ranges. I don't know. So if there is, if I'm not aware of any evidence then I'm not convinced that I should use them. It's really that simple that's epistemology. From a soil test report as a consumer I think the average consumer would look at this and go well of course this is accurate. You know why would they present a bar chart and our interpretation of these values unless they had some sort of you know research conducted to to determine that it's accurate. Why wouldn't, why would they do that? Why would they present this? I don't know the reason. What I do know is I am not aware of any correlation between zinc and iron and copper and boron and even potentially calcium to some degree and even to some degree magnesium to a lesser degree magnesium there's a little bit in the literal magnesium or boron. I'm not aware of anything in the literature that shows tells me that I should have a boron level of one part per million or whatever. Okay but the average person probably doesn't bother or even you know they're busy doing something else. They don't know that that's not their world. Well this is part of my world and I'm just not convinced so this bar chart to me is meaningless. I don't use them. Okay so we'll get to that in one second but that's most people will look at the graph and then they'll go right down to the recommendations on the bottom but that's not necessarily going to give you a full picture because it just sort of takes in a standard approach to nutrient supplementation without really any other consideration other than hey we've established these guidelines for turf so here's what we're going to do. Well yeah I mean that's probably true. They did use guidelines for nitrogen or phosphorus or potassium guidelines for that but I do agree with him that when you jump down to the recommendations and you start fertilizing your turf based upon the recommendations on a soil test they can be useful for lining the soil or for acidifying the soil that those those can I have some confidence in those values if it's actually necessary which I would argue it's probably not necessary to adjust the soil pH except for in extreme situations but that can be valuable but when it comes to particularly nitrogen do not follow the nitrogen recommendations on a soil test report and I'll give you a very clear explanation as to why one nitrogen on a soil test with the exception of ion exchange membranes and some cold season grasses nitrogen fluctuates so fast and so much that there's really no correlation between what the nitrogen would show up on a melee three soil test and what you would see in turf grass there's no correlation there because it's just so variable it changes so quickly so pretty much the consensus of a soil scientist would say nitrogen on a normal extractable soil test is not useful I think that's pretty much this consensus across any reputable soil scientist would say that there actually there is a little bit in some other types of soil test that can be teased out but I don't know if we're really there yet so nitrogen don't use it but they put it on there anyway and at some of the universities that I've worked with I've begged them to remove that and instead put in a link to the the extension publication that does provide the nitrogen recommendations for two reasons one the extension publications oftentimes include the law so in cases I say Florida where there's an urban turf rule and you have to follow certain applications of nitrogen based upon where you live that can be an extension publication so you might be recommended still a soil test report might be recommending a nitrogen application that might be illegal based upon where you live but the extension publications are more current so that's that's one reason why I say follow the extension publications and the second reason is is that the extension publications are published by the faculty and those extension publications are often a result of work that has been conducted a correlation in a calibration well not so much correlation but a calibration on nitrogen on this turf in this location and the examples of that are things like the nitrogen rate required for acceptable by by egress in south Florida which is one of the publications we published in Florida or nitrogen rate required for acceptable centipede grass nitrogen recommendations for acceptable St. Augustine grass these are all referee publications this was in Florida when I was working there these are all referee publications that give you very precise you know local to the to the location in Florida nitrogen recommendations that were likely to result in an acceptable stand but those don't get published on a soil test report so the short and skinny of it is don't follow nitrogen recommendation on soil test report I mean if you're if they're presenting that and they say oh you should play three pounds in a four pounds in ignore it on a soil test report call the land grant university soil test turf grass specialist and ask them look at the extension publications through the university and see what nitrogen rates they're recommending because almost all extension turf grass you know faculty will have publications on what they recommend in terms of nitrogen recommendations north Florida has far lower nitrogen recommendations in south Florida for example okay so please do that instead of using a soil test report to apply nitrogen when it comes to the other recommendations phosphorus potassium and all these other recommendations that that requires a calibration and I highly doubt i'm very skeptical that any of these labs have gone out and conducted a calibration on potassium applications on Bermuda grass in southern Georgia or north Texas or wherever that requires a calibration and to have any confidence in that that recommendation and I don't think any of that's been done well should say any but very little of that has ever been conducted so I agree with him on that I don't I wouldn't go to the recommendations at the bottom in terms of knowing or using that to apply certain amounts of fertilizer okay I'd go to the extension publications from the faculty at the universities that's what I would do um so we're going to dig in a little bit differently and I always go down like this just as the list is on this spectrum sheet here you always look at pH first I always go to organic matter and I always do CEC starts top three I just want to see those items right out of the gate yeah well I agree with soil pH but William Aubrey wouldn't the one he started based kind of saturation oh soil pH is not that important for plant growth okay so pH is immensely important for plant growth the probably the most influential factor in soils for plant growth however just because your soil pH is 7.3 like it is on this test doesn't mean you should go out and start throwing out acidifying elements as you can look at the past episodes I've gone over on soil pH I've clearly shown that if you want to start moving soil pH you need to know what element is deficient if it's nitrogen that's deficient then don't move it from 7 because nitrogen mineralization occurs greatest at 7 but if phosphorus is deficient then you might want to setify it down okay so there's a lot of moving pieces here at the old end of the day what if the turf grass was growing well at that pH then that pH is fine okay as we showed the other day with Dr. Grotahl's picture on cinepe grass at 4.0 even at 4.0 the lab would not recommend aligning cinepe grass she had to go out and actually show that you need to line it up to five or six so the turf grass can grow to an acceptable level those are good reasons but just because the pH is of 5.5 or six or whatever it is doesn't mean you should go out and start throwing out lime there's more to it than that so it is important what I'm saying is it is important but in this one it says 7.3 and optimal six to 6.8 and so if you read that literally you go well I'm above the 6.8 I need to start applying ammonium sulfate or sulfur to lower it back down the question is why who cares if your turf grass is fine it's fine don't try to start throwing things out of whack because you think the pH needs to be exactly 6.3 or 6.5 okay and the reason that there's an importance to the listing of that is soil pH has to be corrected before you can do any other nutrient supplementation and get a good effect that's absolutely not true at all that's the one of the silliest things I've ever heard in my life potassium is has very little pH soil pH has very little effect on extractable potassium between say four and about eight okay potassium extractability is extremely consistent from four to five to six to seven and then when you get up into even to eight when you get above eight then which is unlikely most you know you're talking about less than one percent of the soils or two percent of the soils that you'd have come in are above eight or eight point three so 98 percent of the soils that you deal with are not going to be if the soil pH is not going to greatly affect extractable potassium so when he says you have to correct soil pH in order to have some nutrient and to have the nutrients you apply have an effect is completely wrong with some nutrients with other nutrients there may be a benefit to a move in the pH slightly but he stuck in the the that graph his mind has been he's been delusional about that graph when it talks about the solubility of nutrients changing with based based on the soil pH and then the nutrient solubility will change based upon soil pH but that does not necessarily mean that there'll be greater nutrient uptake of that element there as I showed on those old episode the solubility of some elements might go up but the uptake in the plant might go down and vice versa solubility might go down but the uptake might go up okay and there's very clear examples out in the literature that I went over on those two episodes probably two or three months ago so pH is important but to say that you need to do it first before nutrient uptake can occur or nutrient efficiency uptake can occur whatever is is just not accurate okay so make that number one number one is pH so on here just looking at yours and this in your front yard a 7.3 pH okay so I would make it number one if the turf grass was unacceptable and you were convinced it was a result of low-speed soil pH or high soil pH if your pH was nine nine and a half or something crazy high or three it's very likely that could cause what you're looking at in the turf but not always as we showed with this our team paper on Monday morning it was three and a half pH and that's the pH that the Bermuda grass grew best at because there was no appreciable amounts of aluminum or manganese in the soil to become soluble and to become toxic at that pH okay there's a lot more to it than just looking at and going oh yeah I got a better move the pH maybe a little high in this particular soil what do you say what do you say it's high high front yard a 7.3 pH okay so maybe a little high in this particular soil like as I cruise down to the CEC's this says a 19.1 so you're going to be moving into that clay loam area which is great smaller particle obviously you're in Iowa so you've got you know the old grasslands that were out there probably your your lawn was prior farmland at one point so it's been tilled and nurtured and was topsoil to begin with he's probably right about that those old maul soles that are extremely fertile uh me but the point is they're extremely fertile you probably don't need to play hardly anything just nitrogen you'd be fine as as rich the long guy says you can probably just play nitrogen there and you'd be perfectly fine he's probably right so um but I don't get overly what he when he's talking about CEC there is clearly a relationship between CEC and the type of soil you're dealing with but not always just make that clear you can have a CEC of 16 15 16 and have it be a clay loamy soil or not okay you can have a very low um CEC and have it be sand that's correct but you can also have a very sandy uh lighter soil and have a high CEC depending on the number factors including organic matter and all sorts of amendments that you might have applied so I don't get overly concerned about CEC it's just more of a means to CEC being the cation exchange capacity the ability of the soil to retain cations like magnesium calcium but it gives you an idea of what sort of I look at it as like the buffering capacity of any potential future deficiencies if something strange happens and not you you unknowingly apply a bunch of potassium because you think you're going to reduce the stress and your magnesium is right at that 20 30 parts from a million range may have three you throw a bunch of potassium out there nothing was wrong but then all the potassium knocks off the magnesium and now you've moved yourself into magnesium deficiency because the soil's mobility retained magnesium was very low in a low CEC soil that might not happen in a high CEC soil so I would look at it like that um but I wouldn't look at CEC and then um well there's no reputable soil scientists would ever look at CEC and go yes that's a clay okay there's there's ways to diagnose and to categorize that soil and none of it has to do with the CEC the sand silt and clay and the type of the the type of soil it is has to do with hydrometers and you could you could sift things out there's all sorts of different ways you can do it but it's not based on the CEC um so just running through those items we'd want to look at a soil pH correction yeah no no 7.3 and you're gonna see Ryan's lawn here in a minute it's it's almost as perfect it's virtually the most perfect lawn I've ever seen in my life so why do you want to go out and adjust to see the the pH at a 7.3 or the CEC or whatever it's it's it's just absurd it's the only words that's annoying so don't waste money if following these recommendations from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about okay um and we can check that like so let's take a look at this 7.3 and i'm going to go down to your to the graphs across the bottom and so sulfur would be how we would adjust that and you can see on your the graph that sulfur is in the medium to low range so that's an identifier right there calcium being high that's it that's causing your pH to be high no you can't say that calcium let me just i've said this before i'm gonna pull my hair out before this episode's over oh lord okay when soil pH moves up extractable calcium will also increase that is true but calcium alone does not increase soil pH when you apply lime or you apply any sort of dolomite or lime or anything that would move the pH up it is not a result of the calcium only calcium all calcium does is going to remove hydrogen and aluminum that's on the calon exchange site and move it into solution it's the carbonate in lime that binds with the hydrogen or binds with the aluminum okay it's it's the carbonate that moves the pH up not the calcium thanks taunting it's the carbonate there there is a confusion between oh the calcium is high and that's causing the pH to go up no it is not how it works there is an association between high pH and high calcium yes but just because you apply just because the calcium is high does not necessarily mean that's what's causing the pH to go up and he said something about sulfur this sulfur on the test just so we can see here this sulfur here that he's talking about that is may look three sulfur he's talking about this sulfur i guess being medium or low i don't want to misquote him let me see if i can play it back and make sure i understand what he's saying here that's the bottom and so sulfur would be how we would adjust that and you can see on your the graph that sulfur is in the medium to low range yeah so i think if i can interpret what he's saying correctly and i apologize to john if i'm misinterpreting what he's saying i think what he's saying is is because the sulfur is low on this test and the calcium is high that sort of dynamic is why the pH is high the sulfur on this test is not just elemental sulfur it's probably almost no elemental sulfur the may look three extract extracts sulfate and probably sulfur and when it when it at when it burns it in the plasma flame it's going to burn all forms of sulfur if there's any organic material in there there's any sulfate sulfur and the majority of sulfur in the soil in arable soils at least it's going to be in the sulfate form because it's going to oxidize that's what you happens when you apply elemental sulfur to a soil to acidify it it oxidizes become sulfate in that process results in sulfuric acid that's why the pH goes down but the sulfur on this test is not going to be related to the pH because it's not sulfur it's sulfate sulfur so i don't know if that's what he's saying don't want to misinterpret him but i think that's what he's saying which again if that's true he's confused so that's an identifier right there calcium being high that's that's causing your pH to be high again no not necessarily from that standpoint um so that's the first thing we're going to look at correcting the pH and then we just keep cruising down your organic matter is in a great level uh the buffering capacity of your soil based on a 3.2 percent is fantastic what you can throw at it the soil is going to use very well it's going to store very well and it's going to hold water in a good way without being too saturated um so that that's actually a really good number it's probably giving you about 45 to 60 pounds of free nitrogen a year just on decay and cycling at a 3.2 percent now you can't really say that um but i mean he's probably in the ballpark you can't just look at an organic matter and say it's probably doing this there's a there's a process that you have to actually measure that and determine how much is actually being mineralized but what he's saying is because the organic matter is 3.2 there's going to be some nitrogen mineralized from that and provide that to your turfgrass for free which i agree with he's correct about that but the amount i should have done the math on that before i started the show tonight or today and i would have been able to give you a number of whether or not his numbers accurate or not um but yeah what he's saying is basically correct on that issue organic matter okay um and then we would get into like the base actuations and that's where it starts to get a little bit different uh as far as when i'm looking at things compared to you know with these recommendations that you have here so uh green bar green bar on the right uh where you've got sort of the optimum ranges that are recommended based on your soil type so that bar can actually change depending on the soil type in the area of the country you're in oh jesus freaking christ on a cracker this is going to drive me insane okay what he's saying is is that the optimal range in the green bar is going to change based on soil type so the the ranges that you should fall within will change based on soil type completely inaccurate the maleic three minimum critical minimum is going to be the same regardless okay the amount that gets extracted will differ but if the let's just all agree that's let's say the maleic three um well he was on base kind of saturation let's say the maleic three potassium let's just agree it needs to be 40 parts per million maleic three the the critical limit's not going to change the base kind of saturation range is not going to change the amount that gets extracted will change but the limit isn't you either have enough in the soil determined through an extraction or you don't okay and that enough is it let's just say it's let's say it's 40 parts million a three doesn't matter whether it's clay doesn't matter whether it's a sand alone or organic soil it doesn't make any difference you either have that amount of extractable k or you don't okay you'll see these numbers fluctuate so if they have a recommendation of fos of 40 to 70 parts per million on here that might look different in another area just because of the soil type so no it won't it might look different based on the soil test lab they might they can or they can put whatever number there they want 40 to 70 and that 40 to 70 isn't is the number that comes from a correlation what i'm saying is is that i doubt this lab or many other labs including the many university labs have actually done the correlations to determine what that critical limit is clearly there's been some done Kentucky's been done Florida's been done I think Wisconsin's been done Auburn there's there's there's correlations that have been conducted and those soil test reports generally will use the correlations critical limit but this 40 to 70 it's only going to change based upon the lab and if you do a lab up in New York or California or Florida those labs can put whatever range they want on there what i'm saying is if you follow the faculty's publications those aren't going to change unless there's another new correlation come in a more accurate or more precise or whatever those are going to be the same those reasons i'm saying go to lingering universities extension websites or call the specialist at those universities and have them tell you what is the what is the critical limit for magnesium and florida soils well there's a publication on that what's the critical limit for phosphorus in Wisconsin soils or Pennsylvania soils one turfgrass there's there's data on those okay so you don't need to follow basic concentration full stop but in this case he's looking at them phosphorus yeah may like three and they say in the 40 to 70 over here he's saying this will change and it will not enlist unless the lab just completely ignorant and flawed that's going to be what it is and unless until you change labs okay let's go back let me pay attention to but anyway um the base saturation area where that's talking about potassium magnesium calcium uh salt are what they are reading in that area to give you a total soil solution what salt is that what he said salt let me rewind it the base concentration is measuring salt talking about potassium magnesium calcium salt are what they are oh i think i think he saw sodium here sodium saturation i think he conflated that with salt i think that's what he's doing whether he's conflating that with salt or whether he's saying that all these values are a result of the salt either way he's wrong base kind of saturation all it is is a measure of the cec the total the cation exchange capacity of the soil and how many of those sites are occupied by the cation or the cations down here which are potassium magnesium calcium so you're using these values two hundred eleven four eighty three and four thousand one hundred ninety eight these they're using these values along with they don't have the sodium value on here they're using these values along with the cec and they're determining how much of that is occupied by the various cations that's all that is it's not salt in that area to give you a total soil solution number um your case saturation is in a good line there between two two and four percent it's great i don't care magnesium also in a good zone there at eighteen point six is ten to twenty calcium again is high so we can equate that back down to the bars on the bottom we see that calcium is high and we see that sulfur is low so we know that we're going to utilize sulfur to bring that calcium level down sort of use it a little bit because that's also affecting your pH yeah no it's not affecting pH or it's not resulting in a high pH it might be affecting the pH depending on what's in there um but you don't need to worry about calcium saturation that's complete nonsense and bs and this is but this is the way the cells been used it they sound very convincing very compelling oh yeah okay that's that's high it's above that range so i should listen to him don't don't do that then is where it gets into general recommendations now when i first when you sent me this and looked it over uh when i first looked it over i ran through just just to see what was showing up as far as available nutrients in the soil um your phosphorus is soil test don't don't report available nutrients i'm tired of even saying this drives me insane soil tests do not report available nutrients it's just soluble or extractable okay not available high now typically i see that what is it high what is high as far as available nutrients in the soil um your phosphorus is high now typically i see that phosphorus on this those listing phosphorus is 100 milik three parts per million um he's saying it's high because the range is 40 to 70 what i would say is don't worry about it's 100 parts per million meg three it would be high if you were concerned about environmental risk in terms of runoff phosphorus runoff there's not a lot there is some relationship between the main three extractable phosphorus and runoff but not very good there's a couple of publications on that it's not great to use that to determine or predict what might be of environmental risk um however what i would would i would interpret that as saying okay you got 100 parts per million meg three phosphorus you probably don't need to apply phosphorus at all even if you remove the turfgrass tissue for a decade or more there's no need to apply it okay so if you say in high in that regard then he's correct on um lawns that have been using either starter fertilizer a lot uh or um a biosolid because biosolids if you put out full rates you're getting a significant amount of phosphorus doesn't do either of those apply to you yeah that's probably true in many cases where people have been following poor recommendations on youtube to apply natural organics and they think it's safe and good to apply natural products and but they don't realize is that when you apply natural product based upon the rate of nitrogen and you apply half a pound or a pound in on the nitrogen rate you're applying well in excess of anything you'd ever need in phosphorus and on top of that you might not have even needed to apply any phosphorus at all and over time that can build up and i have several episodes on that specific issue is the long-term effect of natural organics me implied to soil in the phosphorus buildup that can result from that so he's right about that yeah so with the renovations that i've done over the last few years that's pretty typical i would have probably had starter on there and we're also using a lot of malorganite in the past so that's kind of exactly where i think that comes from yeah it's probably true you've got a lot got a lot in the soil and you will not need to apply any phosphorus he's right about that so you can just take that out we're going to go to remove that from your program i agree um if we are moving across uh now we'll go into potassium potassium is actually in pretty good shape but that's one that you can lose out on so you want to make sure let me stop this here for those listening the range that he said will change it'll change by soil and soil type is 200 or 310 on this this is the reason you don't want to follow these recommendations or these these interpretations on many soil tests report they're interpreting potassium maleic three parts million and parts million of 200 i guess less than 200 as being below the range okay so they're saying the potassium should be between 200 and 310 you will almost never see a beneficial response to applying potassium in almost any situation i mean you have to get way way low on potassium like south of 40 you have to get down to 30s or the 20s to see a beneficial response to applied potassium on turf grasses and what this soil test report is saying is you have to have above 200 don't do that and he's saying the potassium's what do he say the potassium is pretty good or whatever you know the potassium again you probably would never need to apply potassium for years years on this soil and you may be in a soil that has potassium berry minerals in there and there's mineralization occurring from the minerals in the soil naturally so you could be a removing turf tissue at a 211 parts million which is where this soil test is you could be removing turf grass tissue harvesting the potassium out of the soil and it would never go down if you have potassium berry minerals such as potassium felts bars in your soil so there is a lot going on here that is necessary to understand before you just start looking at soil test numbers and going yeah i need to apply potassium or it's it's i got plenty of potassium or i don't have enough potassium there's a lot more going on in the soil than just what you see on a soil test report you are getting enough k out throughout the season it's not going to require much in order to maintain healthy turf you'll really only need to put out maybe a pound a thousand throughout the year no you do a 200 parts per million maleic three you don't need to apply any potassium i don't know how much more clear i can make it 200 parts per million maleic three potassium your turf grass does not require any additional applications of potassium and in fact the application of excess potassium in those situations greatly increases the risk of some diseases as i've shown on the channel numerous publications okay do not do that you have enough don't worry about it at 200 parts per million maleic three i would say honestly if you have 40 to 50 parts per million maleic three potassium you're probably fine even in cases where you might experience some winter kill as long as you have 50ish i think the the schmitt paper i have someone can correct me they you may remember if you're listening the schmitt paper i think they stated you need a 50 or 60 parts per million maleic three to minimize the risk of winter kill so you're fine even in cases where there is an environmental stress that would occur that would be reduced because the application of potassium even then it's not that much potassium that you need to apply of potassium and cash is just in the level where you are right now and and it'll be fine and that's something you can look at later on to see if you need to bump that up to another corrective level um again magnesium and calcium are a little bit high you know we're going to buffer that down with sulfur because we're going to get the pH down and then we'll start to see those other numbers move a little bit well magnesium and calcium are not high how do you know they're high i mean how many times do i got to say the same thing over and over and over the likelihood of calcium ever being a problem is almost zero same thing with magnesium you have you the excessive magnesium this idea that you're going to tighten up the soil you're going to have soil structural issues because you have high magnesium it would only exist in the rarest of situations where you have no calcium essentially calcium if you're you're at three or four hundred parts million make three calcium most of literature would say you're fine but there's there's um literature that shows perfectly acceptable turfgrass well below three hundred two hundred three hundred parts million make three magnesium you're looking at 20 to 40 parts million magnesium anything greater than that you're fine okay don't worry about it so don't go in there start throwing stuff at this situation thinking that there's a problem when in reality you're probably fine so we're just kind of working across the board uh sulfur you're probably going to need about i mean i'd say a minimum five pounds would be good for the year and you can split that up it takes a long time for that to break down so you know you're not really going to be seeing pH major changes on that for like 60 to 90 days it's going to take a while and that may be true i don't know i get i think what he's saying is applying sulfur for the pH not for the sulfur i didn't actually see the salt maybe to put the thing back up i didn't see the sulfur mainly three sulfur level on the report but it's i may have missed it i think he's talking about applying sulfur for pH reduction which again i wouldn't worry about it 7.3 and your turfgrass looks perfect okay um but you can put safely on turf especially in the springtime you could put up to five pounds in one shot that's basically true on some of the higher cut turfgrass as rescues for mutas and the ruffs um things like that you can go a little bit higher maybe 10 pounds but i i don't see the point in that what's by risk it you know stay at about five pounds and then you can do another five pounds or just do two pounds and then do no two pounds later and just stay a little safe because remember when you apply that sulfur you're creating sulfuric acid in the soil okay so the the creation of sulfuric acid can be extremely phytotoxic to turfgrass but the safe range really less than 10 but i wouldn't even risk that if you want you don't even need to put sulfur full stop but in this case but if you wanted to two or two to five pounds is probably safe i agree most of the literature will say that now thanks rich long guide sulfur with 16 parts million so if sulfur is 16 parts per million it's unlikely that that would be resulting in a deficiency so he's probably talking about reducing ph that's not as much as you could put out once per thousand and you're talking about elemental sulfur yes elemental sulfur yeah um you have questions about that um so is there any so this is what this is why this video annoyed me so much is because this guy on the screen his name is ryan nor he i mean correct me if i'm wrong he seems to be genuinely interested in knowing what's true what to do you know he he's i mean i don't know him maybe maybe he's not maybe you know maybe he's a more sky on the planet but he i get the impression from he really does want to know he wants to know what do i need to do how can i use these numbers to help you know support my tar for whatever he genuinely seems interested and he's getting fed a low to be asked from this guy that's what annoys me he's he's taken advantage of mr nor's um you know just genuine sincere approach to this pretty much just a standard thing like you can just go get somewhere right mm-hmm yeah it's pretty common most garden stores small small lawn and garden centers carry it um and in ag land where you are there's probably loads of it around i i think you could probably find it pretty simply okay and in terms of with this being a little bit different for me too with it being a low cut turf and i'm taking care of it slightly different than maybe a normal lawn how would that play into things maybe with what i'm doing especially is k probably still going to be pretty important in that part is yes okay so when you start going into short mose um uh treating you know a lawn more like a golf green um or or even a fairway you need to consider uh less nutrient more often because i was that may be true in sand-based root zones that that's what i've mentioned many times before going to be your friend but as far as stress goes potassium and sulfur are going to be key um to make sure that you have those in your program regularly so that you're eliminating stress yeah not on a soil that has a potassium made like three of 200 so the potassium is very important but you don't need to apply anymore like i mentioned potassium will have an influence on stress at 200 parts per million you're applying more potassium it's likely going to increase the stress but people like this gentleman mr perry don't bother reading the scientific literature and they just spew a bunch of bs out and convince people you need to apply potassium for stress reduction they don't you know if they took you know an hour a day or 30 minutes before they went to bed and read some scientific literature they might be more reversed on these issues and have a different opinion um and i would recommend if you can do it potassium sulfate is great or an SOP um that's any response you see to potassium sulfate is almost certainly a result of the sulfate okay unless you have potassium solo 20 30 parts will make three or less that you're actually seeing a potassium deficiency the application of potassium sulfate would any benefit would come from the sulfate which is fine the potassium sulfate gypsum which is calcium sulfate and ammonium sulfate are the three least expensive sources to apply sulfate depending on if you counter uh if you remove the amount of nitrogen that you were applying anyway from and then you apply ammonium sulfate if you balance out the nitrogen ammonium sulfate can be also be competitive in terms of sulfate applications but potassium sulfate's fine the water soluble potash you know you may be able to find that for thirty five dollars a bag or something at a at a turf supply place that would be really good for you come and that's a simple zero zero fifty it's easy to calculate out how many you know pounds are going to put out but you could run that on saying eighth of a pound or or you know even as much as a quarter of a pound a month if you're going to be keeping it super low and that'll really help with your summertime disease resistance and yeah you don't know that for recovery overall yeah i would say no how do you know that there's there's bucoos of information in the literature that so at at sixteen parts from the million may make three sulfur you're fine not them there's not a lot of information on that but sixteen parts million you're fine you're not going to see any benefit to playing sulfate more than likely when you're that high and you're certainly not going to see any beneficial response to applying potassium when you're two hundred parts per million may look three i would i would challenge anyone to show me any refereeed paper on the planet from turfgrass a reputable turfgrass journal that shows a a beneficial response to applied potassium when the may look three is two hundred parts per million you're not you're almost never going to see that okay so there's no need to apply potassium sulfate according to these numbers and according to the way his lawn looks there's no need you're not going to see any benefit from that application and then a same um as far as nitrogen goes in that situation how much are you thinking per month would probably be pretty good so if you're going to go monthly um you probably will run now i would recommend based on your soil report uh you probably run something like ammonium sulfate would be really good i don't have a problem with that i mean seven point three ph you can use ammonium sulfate it's going to provide sulfate so any benefit that would have come from the potassium sulfate will now be applied be realized from the ammonium sulfate so again enough for the reason not to apply potassium sulfate but at seven point three you're probably fine using a ria or ammonium sulfate if anything it's going to lower the ph down a little bit over time but it's you're already at seven point three you're probably fine and ammonium sulfate has the additional value of applying sulfate that urea does not um because of the additional sulfur it's going to help holy christ on a crack what do he say be really good um because of the additional sulfur it's going to help holy jesus let me i want to make sure i i understand him correctly you probably will run now i would recommend based on your soil report uh you probably run something like ammonium sulfate would be really good um because of the additional sulfur it's going to help i think he's talking about sulfur from ammonium sulfate having the effect on ph i think that's what he's talking about i'm not sure but i'm pretty sure what he's saying what he's implying is use ammonium sulfate in this situation because of the additional sulfur did i read that correctly guys gals in the chat he is completely off i don't know where he gets this information from ammonium sulfate has a profound effect on the acidification of soils but it has nothing to do with the sulfur and the ammonium sulfate the sulfur and ammonium sulfate is sulfate sulfur it's already been oxidized i don't want to hit him hard if he's if if i'm misunderstanding him perhaps i'm misunderstanding him but sulfur has to be elemental sulfur in order to have an effect on ph ammonium sulfate acidifies the soil because you're applying eight hydrogen ions for every a molecule of ammonium sulfate you're adding you're directly adding hydrogen ions into the soil system the sulfur and ammonium sulfate has nothing to do with it let me look at this again i feel bad if if i'm misunderstanding him so if you're going to go monthly um you probably will run now i would recommend based on your soil report uh you probably run something like ammonium sulfate would be really good um because of the additional sulfur it's going to help you could run between if you're going to go every month and that's what he's saying he's saying the sulfur from ammonium sulfate so i made it clear he's not accurate he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to how ammonium sulfate acidifies the soil it's not from the sulfur it's from the ammonium good morning rob a third third pound three eighths of a pound per month okay would actually be pretty nice um you could go as much as a half pound but i don't know if you'll need to go that high that's going to end up giving you yeah i mean you get three pounds if you do it six times how long does he's in eight months uh probably about eight yeah i would start out running it with a half pound first month first and second month get a half pound out and then um maybe start to readjust that as time goes on because you don't really want to really want to be pushing a whole lot of growth you want to keep it moving along pretty low so you know miners are going to be more important and just keep your in level on the lower side of the miners are not that important miners are important the application of miners isn't going to result in any benefit more than likely so they're not important in that regard let me just mention on nitrogen he's he's trying to figure out how to answer ryan's question when i think he doesn't know the answer to it when it comes to nitrogen applications here's my recommendations to figure out how much nitrogen you need to apply at your state go to the university and pull up the extension publications because those are going to be largely updated or more recent and if there's any laws that restrict nitrogen applications in your state they're going to count for that so whether it's the rate of nitrogen or whether it's the time of year you can apply nitrogen the extension bulletins and publications will account for those laws so if you're in texas or california or florida or georgia or wherever it is you can't just say i'll do this because in your state it might be illegal so i would go to the university find the publications on nitrogen applications to you know whatever beyegrass or st ogson grass find it and then you're going to see see some ranges those ranges are it instituted for a very specific reason which i can go into later but there's a range that's say two to four pounds of nitrogen i would look at that and say that's the total amount for the year that i need to apply that i am allowed to apply two to four pounds of nitrogen let's just say that and then at your location at your on your golf course at your salt farm or your lawn or whatever i would self calibrate i would be putting out for the growing seed let's say you're growing season six months i would be putting out if and you say you i want to apply an action every two months versus say i want to play nitrogen every one month or whatever i would take that that growing season and i would divide the number of months by the total amount of nitrogen then you can apply or the other way around so you know how much nitrogen you can apply each month and then say you're applying nitrogen at half pound a month for six months that's three pounds a year and you realize i'm mowing the grass every week i don't want to do this you know i can't keep up with it then you can self calibrate that and move the nitrogen rate down a little bit for the following season or the end of the end of the season you're in now but you start with the ranges from the university so because you know those are probably going to be legal to apply very they will be legal to apply and then within those ranges you can fidget with the numbers up or down monthly or by monthly however you want to do it such that you can meet the expectations that you're looking for the growth rate or the quality or whatever it might be in at your home or on your golf course okay don't go by somebody's saying the stuff on youtube okay that don't follow those recommendations because they could be completely illegal in your situation don't do that just go to university get the ranges and then adjust it up or down slightly within those ranges to meet your expectations at your location that that's my recommendation okay and is there anything different there in terms of the foliar feeding that i mean we obviously the grass is still in the soil so it matters but in terms of feeding it through the leaf versus is is that any different or play into it in any way oh lord this will be this will be good before i forget that question has something to do with randy's question yesterday about i don't know if you sent me an email randy or if you put it in the chat about by your at urea and the potential for burning is foliar i'll look that up and there's not a lot of information on that but and we'll see what um by your it can be toxic depending on you know number of factors but there's not a lot of information in turquoise literature but it has to do with foliar applications not granular applications and so let's see what he says about the difference between foliar and granular application uh so you have to think about this way it's all about surface area right so if you're cutting grass really super short you've got a lot less surface area to adhere to as far as foliar goes but that doesn't really matter the grass is only picking up a percentage of that anyway the rest of it's getting pushed down into the soil and it's going to be up taken through soil conversion and roots no matter what so it doesn't really make a difference uh you you'll get sort of a when you foliar versus just strictly granular feed you'll get a little bit quicker visual response just because you're seeing that directly into the plant um but then whatever's left over is going to be pushed down into the soil for soil use so you'll it's it all works the same okay um well i mean i'm not gonna hit him too hard on that either i mean for the most parties in the ballpark uh the application of nitrogen in foliar form has been shown to be most effective as urea and the concept behind that is because urea is not charged as opposed to ammonium or nitrate being applied to the leaves or they are positively and negatively charged respectively urea may have a little bit more it may be a little easier to facilitate the uptake of a non-charged nitrogen source like urea then it wouldn't a charged source that's the general concept behind it arkansas did us some work on that and that's i wouldn't say that's a slam dunk but there is is i do have some confidence in that position because the research has been applied in my opinion the the value of granular nitrogen application since it's they brought it up the value of granular nitrogen applications is the cost and the potential longevity of release so you're almost never going to find a less expensive way to apply nitrogen in a foliar form as you would from a similar form in granular form or similar rate in granular form so if you're applying urea in a granular form it's going to be a little safer yeah you can also apply slow release nitrogen sources as a granular form as opposed to foliar applications global applications have to be a much lower rate and more frequently because the burn potential is quite high however with the advantage of foliar is that you can really dial it in really ties so golf courses are playing weekly applications on their putting greens because they want to have more control over that but most home lawns granular applications of nitrogen are going to be less expensive and going to result in a perfectly acceptable lawn for fun for it's fine but if you really want to control everything and you want to make sure you know exactly how much is going on and you're going to put out a .1 or .2 pounds in from urea or whatever source as a foliar you could do that too and you're probably going to avoid some of the ebbs and flows of the not the torque quality going up and down by using a foliar application of urea as opposed to a soluble granular application of urea but in terms of turf quality it just depends on how you want to slice that cake i'm not i don't have enough energy or interest to put out foliar applications i just put out granular application and i'm fine but if you know it wouldn't shock me if some of the people listening who really want a really perfect lawn would find that they can do that more efficiently as a foliar application and that's that's fine and the other the further benefit of foliar is that you can include things like iron that can be useful as a foliar application whereas that iron cannot be really useful as a granular application so there's values both ways depending on what you're willing how much effort you're willing to put into it and how much money and what your expectations are yeah it's a sort of speed of uptake i guess okay well that's true the speed of uptake a speed of uptake or the speed of i wouldn't say uptake i would say the speed of response is probably uh almost always actually greater with the foliar application you'll see a response in a day or two granular applications require a little bit of uh soil up then you know moving into the soil and then being taken up by the roots and then move up into the leaves whereas urea or nitrogen applied to the leaves is right there so that's probably true so then i know we talked a little at loncology kind of about the also the recommendations down below if sometimes that seems to be a very general thing so maybe you uh for people looking at that part they kind of want to just kind of know that that's sometimes just more of a general look at this now it is in a lot of cases uh the recommendations are based uh off of just the sort of land grant university recommendations and so what you're going to see well yeah i would hope so yeah i agree now i'm on this particular test coming from this particular lab i doubt it because there's land grant recommendations that don't even exist on that land grants soil test report within the same university perfect example is going on right now here in kentucky we don't recommend the use of base kind of saturation at all there's no evidence to support that at the the use of new the application nutrients following base kind of saturation but it's on the soil test reporting university kentucky now so i would hope they'd follow university specialist recommendations but not always certainly not on the soil test report doesn't mean that it's doing that in general on a soil report is four pounds of nitrogen recommended annually um one to two pounds of phos and one to two pounds of potassium that that's probably true yeah he's probably right about that they just apply four and one and two or four and two or whatever the case is and what i've said many times i wouldn't follow recommendations on that if that's where he's going i don't know where he's going with this if that's where he's going i wouldn't really follow these recommendations i'm a complete agreement with that i would i would look at those and and and as long as they say you know refer to this extension publication then i would go to the extension publication to follow those but i wouldn't follow these recommendations because that requires i said a calibration and i doubt this soil test report includes recommendations based upon a calibration that's pretty general and um some some labs you know if they see something it's got like they do a nitrate test they do all this stuff you'll see an adjustment on the nitrogen levels that those nitrogen recommendations might be lower um so that can happen you know you'll see the phosphorus and potassium change a little bit if there's a major discrepancy um but you'll also see in general there's like a recommendation for a fertilizer whether it's like a triple 15 or whatever that might be and it'll just say apply five point five pounds of this per thousand yeah four times a year yeah and that doesn't really get you into anything else it's just sort of measuring your your big three uh in pk so yeah that's true he's right about that sometimes i'll see that too five pounds of 10 10 10 or 15 15 15 please don't do that okay if you happen to need nitrogen phosphorus and potassium then do that but in many cases in this particularly case where there's no need to apply phosphorus at all there's no need to apply potassium at all then just apply straight nitrogen if the potassium is low then apply nitrogen and and potassium if the potassium is fine with the phosphorus is low and so forth applied just nitrogen and phosphorus but the sort of the unilateral application of just in pnk five pounds of this five ten pounds ten ten ten whatever the case is i really wouldn't recommend following that and the reason is because you're you're wasting a lot of money and a lot of resources buying phosphorus and potassium when you're almost certainly never going to see a response to that in at least in this situation on this test and if you're an environmentalist you're applying phosphorus in a situation where none is needed turfgrass is probably never going to respond to that in this situation and that's an element of potential environmental impairment that's all well and good but if you don't do the adjustments with the other miners or any other limiting piece on there you're never going to get the full value of that material to give you like an epic lawn you're just sort of giving it a keeping a live look if you just follow those basic recommendations i disagree i mean if you follow recommendations on that soil test report you're probably going to have far more than you'd ever need if your lawn is not going to be limited by the nutrients that you apply that i'll say that much if anything you're going to have some excess potassium might cause a stress okay but you're not going to be quality of your lawn is not going to be inhibited because you follow that recommendation you're going to be the point is you're going to be playing too much that's my take on it not it's not that you're not going to be playing enough you'll be you'll be playing more than enough so nutrients won't be limiting the the ability of your lawn to achieve at a very very high level would be a result of something else like the type of mower that you're using or the amount or quality of water that you're applying those sorts of things yep okay yeah yeah and i think going back all the way to the to the first part of our conversation there about looking at a test and not freaking out is i mean i'm looking at my lawn out here out the window and look at this thing i mean come on you would be hard pressed to find golf course approaches that look that good find me a t-box that looks better than ryan nor's front lawn it's gonna be a long time you're gonna be looking for a long time to find something better looking than that and you're telling me you need to be applying potassium to that lawn or phosphorus of that lawn micronutrients of that lawn on the soil test and a lawn that looks like this and i'm assuming he doesn't have any pre-existing conditions and he might i don't know but assuming he doesn't have any pre-existing conditions his lawn looks frickin fantastic you don't just get a good mower which clearly does he's drippin it up get a good mower have a good water regime apply some nitrogen maybe a little fuller iron here and there and you're gonna be fine applying all this other stuff applying sulfur to move it down and move the calcium down to move the sulfur up and move the pH down and plant it's just it's madness yeah it's it's absolute madness he's it's on is as i can't i can't say because i'm not standing on it but from a distance on this video it is as close to a nine as you could possibly get i mean if i want to look at it maybe it's not quite so dense i don't know but on youtube it's a nine you're not going to get much better than that so good job mr nor looks good i don't know why you need to follow the recommendations from this guy applying stuff to lower your pH obviously it still looks very good so yeah no joke look at that thing you may have some little i don't know what this little holes here i don't know if he took some soil samples out or maybe he had some lawyer he removed some solid plugs or something but it looks great just keep doing what you're doing you could probably remove stuff from it rather than you're from your nutrient program rather than adding stuff to it looks fine i mean maybe it didn't look fine to him i don't know what his take on it is boy he just said it looks fine let's see what he said he said it obviously looks great it still looks very good very good so that's his opinion looks great i agree don't need to throw a bunch of stuff at it right now to try to move pH and calcium and sulfur and all this other stuff it's silly wasteful well considering that it's a 7.3 and that yes i can improve some things it kind of goes back to the fact that you don't need to freak out too much because i'm looking at a very nice set of turf out there i can maybe just make it a touch better and improve things you know that way you probably could but it's not going to come from applying potassium it's not going to come from moving the pH down from 7.3 when starting at 7.3 you might be a little bit uh i don't know what kind of mower you're using a lot of the quality can come from the type of cut that you have on your mower how many blades you have on your mower the height of cut you're cutting it out rolling it you know top dressing all these other things that have nothing to do with nutrients really has to do with water or lighter temperature or damage the disease that triangle that i use that someone put up here randy put it up here earlier as a emoji if you start from the bottom of that foundation up you're probably going to move it from really really really good to great i would say that's great already but but i doubt you would ever see a bump in quality from where you're at now mr nor to where maybe a little bit finer by far by lowering the pH and applying sulfur and applying you know whatever he's saying to apply nutrients are not your limiting factor is my point yes yeah and that's really all it's going to do is you're going to increase efficiency overall so you know you'll see you'll see your grass growing more even you'll see the colors stay longer you'll see um it less hot spots you'll you'll see less weeds i mean a lot of this stuff goes to weeds okay so he's made a lot of claims that can be measured that's what i like i like i like truth claims that are not ambiguous they say more color less weeds all these things can be measured and that's what we do in science we can go and measure those we can put those as a hypothesis go out and design up the study and conduct it and see what happens and when we do while in base count saturation isn't going to have any effect on weeds isn't going to have any effect on the uniformity of color or the longevity of color as he mentioned okay so that is to where if we're correcting these soil deficiencies then we're not going to see as many weed issues pop up or fungus issues pop up or or even insects what deficiencies are you talking about did i miss something i didn't see a deficiency on that test not in nutrients so you know the stronger we can make the soil the better chance we have of an overall health so well true that's why you want to look at it it's not just about making the grass green because you can make grass green with just nitrogen you can do that and just pound it pound a pound it you can always force out grass to be green but it might not be as thick and you might have a ton of dandelions you might start getting crab grass but you still have green grass yeah see that's what you got to do you got to install some sort of fear in the client or the end user there must be some sort of problem that you have to create you can't just apply nitrogen because it'll be just you'll have green grass but it won't be as dense how how would that happen how would you apply nitrogen increase the color increase the growth but not increase the density you're going to increase the density so it's going to happen okay when nutrients are deficient regardless of the nutrient it could be boron if it is indeed deficient then it will require the application of that element in order to alleviate that deficiency that's true okay and there is clearly a relationship between some wheat populations and some nutrient fertilizer regimes that that is true but to say that you're going to have all these problems if you only apply nitrogen is um it's fear-mongering that's what it is it's not based on reality right so this is going a step further of saying hey we're going to put in a little bit of this and it's going to make such a compounding effort over time to reduce our our needs on these other you know herbicides and things like that so that's that's how i see it okay well i don't know if any of that's true you're saying you can you can adjust the soil and you're going to have less weeds and less disease that's you know this probably if you have a healthy stand of turf grass then it is going to have a great ability to resist you know diseases and you know weed pressure and all these things all that's true insect damage and all that stuff all that's true and all that can be achieved at least in the case of mr nor's lawn and his soil test with just you know a sufficient but not excessive applications of nitrogen and a little bit of color you want some that go ahead and apply some foliar iron but throwing out a bunch of other stuff doesn't seem in my view based upon what i'm seeing in his lawn based upon what i saw in the soil test report i don't see any value just see a lot of waste okay well i think that pretty much covers things there um you know for those people just getting into this it might seem a little overwhelming at first it kind of did to me but the more that i've looked at these tests the more i've talked to you and talked to other people that i've really been breaking it down for people it's really making a lot of sense so i think it just takes a little time to to get it in through your head but thank you very much john i really appreciate you going over this with me and uh yeah thanks very much okay and that's why i went over it i'm so sorry for mr nor is he you know he seems sincere he seems genuinely interested in understanding it learning more about it and he's getting his information from someone who doesn't have a really clue what he's talking about when it comes to soils in turf grasses unfortunately and unfortunately i don't know this video is five oh it's five years old so maybe mr nor is uh since you know adjusted how he does things or maybe he's further convinced that what this gentleman saying is correct i don't know what his position is now but when people start looking for information looking for what's true to go to youtube is probably not wise because how do you know and i'm going to use an example here before i close off here is that the question how do you know the information is accurate or valid or evidence-based how do you how would you go find it and i got a question yesterday from randy i think it was randy who was asking me about biorette urea and his question was do i need to be concerned about the biorette content in spray-grade urea essentially it's what he's asking i don't know the answer to that question so how do i go find information how do i have confidence information what i do is i go straight to the tri-societies agronomy or crops or soils.org and i go to their publications crop science or agronomy journal or whatever i'm sorry okay i wasn't randy was somebody else i apologize i can't remember who was somebody asked me this question uh yesterday and i and i go to the search through journals and i type in biorette turfgrass and i search for it and exactly one article came up then i go to google scholar and i type in biorette turfgrass and exactly one article well more articles came up but one article in turfgrass came up then i go to turfgrass information file and i type in the search engine biorette because everything on turfgrass information file from michigan state is going to have turfgrass papers only type in biorette and the same paper came up it's from 1950 something or 40 something i can't remember so there's only one paper okay so i read that paper and i and i see it's on coastal bermuda grass and it's i don't think they applied up foliar they applied it as a granule so it's not exactly what he was asking but it's all we can go by so i i know that biorette can be a problem but i can't really provide much have much confidence in saying you know what you're biorette and your foliar grade urea should be less than two percent or something or you're going to probably can't say that with much confidence because i don't have any more information in the literature i don't go to youtube and do biorette urea and look for it that's how i have confidence in the information that i receive is i asked i'm asked a question i don't know the answer to turfgrass information file or google scholar or tri-societies and do a search on it do a literature review on it and see what you can find that's how i gain knowledge and gain confidence on information so in the case of soil testing which is what this video is about i don't know how to read soil tests i don't know how to do this that's how you feel well i wouldn't go to youtube to find out you can go to youtube to figure out how to bake a cake okay make make a pizza but when it comes to this this is science you know call your land great university ask them if they don't know they'll send you in a different direction to find someone who does know look it up on tri-societies that's how i start vetting the information and my confidence in the formation is directly related to the evidence that supports it and the evidence comes from the scientific literature and right now my confidence i'm by your urea is very very low i don't have much confidence because there's not much evidence that's how it works okay but when you get to youtube and you get this information thrown at you you're if you don't have the the governor inside you to detect bs you're just going to receive the information of it as if it's true when you don't have the necessary knowledge to properly vet what is true versus what is bs versus what is lies misinformation and disinformation so please um you know do your best to vet the information don't just don't just assume that it's true because you know some salesman on youtube is sounds confident and sounds confident about the information okay thanks grey says dr shadix try to stay calm after this nonsense yeah i'm gonna try to it's uh oh valerio thank you yeah valerio asked me about the bayourette i thank you valerio i apologize i got confused like we have some international audience here and sometimes like that get confused thank you for speaking up valerio you ask me about the bayourette so i'll send you an article um valerio if i have your email about that but there's really not much information on it just so you know but there is some evidence that the bayourette can be toxic to some plants at a high enough percentage applied to the leaves there is a little bit of evidence there but i can't tell you what it should be on turf grasses unfortunately okay thanks all we had a really good crowd tonight fifty something people online watching this live i hope i hope you enjoyed it i'll be back on thursday night where we're going to be going over a more base kind of saturation stuff and um we're going over the most important base kind of saturation paper in the last hundred years probably the ulsen 82 paper it might be there for a while it might be a little dry but it's really important to understand um why base kind of saturation i have the opinion that it is invalid it's not useful and it's wasteful and one of the main reasons is the ulsen 82 paper which i'll go over on thursday night at nine p.m i look forward to erasing seen everybody there thanks so much see you bye
