The Future of Golf Course Architecture in Canada – Part Two - Pesticides

Lossiemouth

“Reduce & Eliminate the Use of Pesticides?” – Jennifer Grant

This was the lecture I wanted to see. Could we maintain a course with no pesticides? Was it still possible to provide acceptable playing conditions after legislation that forced golf to turn to little or no inputs? Could we turn back to a more UK style of maintenance? After all, my lecture two days later talked openly about the possibility of contending with this circumstance as part of the potential vision of the future.

Dr. Grant talked about Cornel’s experimental program going on at the Green Course at Bethpage State Park. They had been a running experiment for around six years with the goal of find out what effects different cultural practices, levels of input, and the use of chemicals had on turfgrass. They also wanted to investigate the use of biological controls and alternative approaches to see what sort of impact they could have on turfgrass and whether there were alternative approaches that work. Their focus was also on testing solutions that were more environmentally responsible right up against common cultural practices.

The Old Course

The 18 greens were divided into six groups and each was put under different regimes to see how they react. One of the test groups were given no pesticide and herbicide, the next set were maintained under the Integrated Pest Management and the last group allowed anything the superintendent wanted to use. Each group was then divided to break out different practices under each scenario.

While environmentalists and politicians may want to completely ban the use of pesticides and herbicides – the answer was swift. At Bethpage it proved impossible since dollar spot alone was enough to wipe out the greens. The study quickly concluded that no cultural practice was capable of dealing with the threat and even if they managed to avoid the snow mold or dollar spot another disease like Pythium was always there to finish them off. The greens need some applications to survive.

But what became interesting was they quickly found out that “light” chemical use was almost as successful as an unlimited use of chemicals. When you added in particular cultural practices and the use of organics to control the disease and pest pressures on turf and the conclusions were fascinating. What they learned was by selecting certain “lower toxicity” products and limiting the spraying to a minimum and increasing certain cultural practices they could meet green expectations of around 9 feet and take the environmental impact down up to 90% from the unlimited approach. While no input is impossible, minimal input is not. It’s complicated at times, requires additional maintenance, a little more expense – but possible!

There are two key things that designers and regulators must read into this study to see this become the standard to which we all should strive. They must recognize the old problems are still problems and become bigger problems since the superintendent has half there tools removed from the box. We need to head down this path BUT we need to ensure the growing environment is ideal to allow for the production of carbohydrates the key to making sure the plant is as strong as possible and is more resistant to disease.

Alwoody

One interesting note was when the golf courses began to brown a little through reduced input, the tested the quality of the roll of the ball roll and found it just as consistent in that low input environment. In other words they may not have looked as “nice” (ie. green) but they played exactly the same. I think if anyone really wants to address this whole issue correctly – the answer to reducing is follow their example of lower inputs and better environmental choices when they need a produce. The mantra of reducing “toxicity risk” is a great one. Toxicity risk looks at the opportunity for the chemical to migrate, the risk of contact, the strength of the product and places a value that needs to be multiplied by the application rate. It values the overall impact to the environment and helps us make the best decisions for the ecosystem rather than a blanket decision.

To Part 3