With the fall fertilization for cool-season turfgrasses just around the corner I wanted to take a moment to make you aware of another interactive tool that is now available. This tool is intended to help you determine your fertilizer needs. The fertilizer calculator and is located at: http://www.agry.purdue.edu/turf/fertcalc/Fertilization calc.html With this information you can ensure you are applying and purchasing the correct amount of fertilizer for your turf. We all know that properly fertilizing cool-season grasses in September is essential to promoting summer recovery and storing carbohydrates, right?!
Some of the features I would like to point out include: 1.) It was designed to look like a fertilizer label so that you simply have to enter information off the label (e.g. the fertilizer analysis, bag size, price, etc.), then enter the size of the area to be treated and target fertilizer rate. 2.) It is important to read the text properly, for example if you are entering the size of the area to be treated (e.g. 12,000 square feet) you need to enter 12000 without a comma. For fertilizer rates ½ pound needs to be entered as 0.5, etc 3.) It works for more than just nitrogen, and phosphate (P) and potash (K) applications can also be calculated.
As with the turf identification tool: http://www.agry.purdue.edu/turf/tool/index.html we will continue to “tweak” and improve them throughout the year. Should you have any meaningful suggestions which improve their use, feel free to direct those to me personally via email: cbigelow@purdue.edu
Acknowledgement:
I would like to thank Mr. Jonathan Hardebeck for all his hard work on this project this past summer in helping a technologically challenged person like myself bring a concept into something our turf managers can use.