Please join us in welcoming Marshall Evans to our team of Agronomists. He lives in Florida and will be working throughout the state helping superintendents discover the value of Biological Soil Management. Marshall comes to us from Precision Laboratories where he spent his time talking to clients about water management - something that fits in nicely with the soils work he will be doing with his EarthWorks clients.

Marshall started his career working on golf courses in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida where he got a lot of grow in experience. From there he moved into distributor sales and then manufacturer sales which led him to EarthWorks. Over the years we have worked with Marshall at joint training programs, so he is very familiar with the EarthWorks vision. We look forward to supporting him as he works with the turf managers in Florida and the Southeast. Please join us in welcoming him aboard. You can contact Marshall at marshall@soilfirst.com.

“If we’re not talking about drainage, then we’re not having the right conversation.” This has been the mantra for our guest, Pat Quinlan, as he’s developed the long range plan with the members at Fairmount Country Club. Fairmount borders the Great Swamp National Refuge in northern New Jersey, and as you can imagine, managing soil moisture is the key to success at this golf course.

Pat is a great conversationalist. Beyond telling many great stories about his career and path to Fairmount, Pat discusses the many projects underway on the golf course. From internal drainage in greens and fairways to a new Capillary Concrete bunker rebuild, Pat’s focus is on the member experience. This includes not just the golf course, but bringing horticulture and indoor plants into the clubhouse.

The 2024 GCSAA Conference and Trade Show  was one of the most successful and enjoyable shows in many years. The buzz was steady for two days. We had the pleasure of seeing old friends and meeting new ones, and the EarthWorks floor party was the event of the show!

Once again, the EarthWorks Podcast team of Kevin Hicks, Jack Higgins and Joel Simmons had the opportunity to do a live podcast from the floor of the show.  This year’s guests were Lance Lauer, CGCS, from the Country Club at Castle Pines in Colorado and Todd Bohn from Desert Mountain in Phoenix. Each shared some of the work going on at their respective clubs.

The EarthWorks podcast team closed with a round table discussion hoping to solve all the problems in the golf world. It’s live, with a crowd and some background noise but a lot of fun and well worth the listen!

Joel Simmons with Cory Blair, Business Development Manager, Capillary Flow

We met Cory Blair in the late 1990’s when he was a superintendent; today he is the Business Development Manager for Capillary Flow. His company is best known for their bunker program known as Capillary Concrete. The Capillary Concrete process for bunkers is a hardscape system where the concrete is applied over a drainage system and then sand is laid over the top of this porous material. This allows the bunkers to drain and hold the sand where the golf course manager wants it – in the bunker.

Cory introduces us to an innovative new process that they are developing called Capillary Flow. Cory describes how they are using this system in the construction of a tee box on a golf course.In the process they build a two channel water holding basin with the capillary concrete above it that allows water and air to move both up and down using a built in pumping system. This allows the superintendent to both provide air when needed and move water in or out of the root zone. Cory makes the claim that this could save upwards of 50% of the water usage on any tee constructed using this technology.

Ever wonder what it would be like to manage an NFL and MLB facility at the same time? Ryan Bjorn does both in New England for the New England Patriots football team and the New England Revolution soccer team. He manages 6 grass practice fields, 3 for each team, and the Gillette Stadium artificial field.

Days after the Patriots finished their last game in early January the Revolution started practicing and the fields had to be ready to play. When he was asked if it was a relief when the football season ended, he reminded us that the next Monday the stadium field was replaced and that they only had days to get ready for the Revolution’s training season to start.

Ryan has one of the most complete resumes in sports turf, starting with a stint in golf course maintenance. He has also spent time in rec and parks, baseball with the Boston Red Sox, and working with the warm grasses in the transition zone of the Maryland SoccerPlex.

Finally, he was offered the head job at Gillette Stadium and all that it involves. When asked what advice he would give to any young sports turf manager it was to get as much varied experience as possible. Not surprising when you consider how diversified his experience has been. A wonderful conversation that spans agronomy, big time sports, and local community rec and parks.

On this week’s podcast, we talked with Greg Baer, principal of The Baer Design Group (Eagle, IdahoO, an irrigation design firm that primarily serves the Pacific Northwest. We discussed the latest in irrigation design and irrigation technology and how it’s changed over the years. Greg weighed in on the pitfalls and steps to success when considering an irrigation renovation. We also discussed the steps a turf manager can take to fine tune an existing system to maximize efficiency.

With so much renovation work going on right now in golf and sports turf, we thought it was a good time to get someone on that can lend his expertise for these important (and expensive) decisions.

When Vincent Mina started a small microgreens farm in Hawaii he was not sure how to be a farmer! Fortunately he discovered ACRES USA and traveled halfway across the country to their conference where he met the founding partner of EarthWorks, Jerry Brunetti.

Whether you manage a farm, a golf course or a sports field we can help you save money by reducing inputs. Vincent shares his soil story as well as some great tidbits about Jerry.

A constant curiosity, a deep love for plants, and Wayne Jackson’s intelligence and business acumen are at the root of Blooming Beds’ success. Wayne uses the phrase, “extract the full ornamental value from the plant.”

Check out what he means by that in this fascinating conversation with Jack Higgins.

John Reilly of Longboat Key Club in Sarasota, Florida, talks with Joel Simmons about how he successfully battled the sodium war and managed the complete transition to Platinum Paspalum grass on the light sandy soils at LBKC.

John is big on collecting data, and uses matrices to look at many different data points to help him make agronomic decisions on a daily basis. A great conversation!

At EarthWorks we have created a year end tradition of bringing the entire agronomy team together to share our thoughts about the events of the year as it comes to a close. All four of us sat around the desk and talked about everything from the weather, to what most inspired us, to what 2024 might look like.

Most importantly we took the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us and has made Biological Soil Management part of their agronomic practice in 2023. 

This week's podcast dips back into the past to highlight two great guests, Jay Lo Monaco of Paul’s Best Lawn Care and Pete Bachman of Pebble Beach. The clips are each a little different in their subject matter. Jay and Jack Higgins talk a lot about business and cultivating passion into your marketing approach. Pete and Jack have a great time reminiscing about college days and their paths into the positions they are in now. Enjoy!

Meet Mike Kerns, Director of Turf and Grounds at San Diego State’s Snapdragon Field. Mike manages one of the busiest sports facilities in the country in beautiful San Diego.

Finding things to keep busy hasn’t been an issue this year! They hosted a total of 62 events at the 2 year old stadium, up from 12 in the first year. We talked about the challenges of going from football, to soccer to rugby, then sprinkling in a concert or a dinner on the field, sometimes all within a few days.

Mike’s ability to turn on a dime and constantly reinvent the way they prepare the busy venue is impressive. He joked that there was no instruction manual for how to keep a venue playable with that much going on at any given time. Mike is a leader in the sports turf industry, but says that his network of industry peers is still the most important tool in his ‘cart.’

Lawrence Mayhew is back! Let’s talk tank mixes! Too many products going into a tank can become quite a problem chemically causing clogged nozzles or a tank that gels up and becomes unusable. This costs a lot of money, a lot of time, and can really ruin your day!  Learn about the chemical reactions that can occur, and how to build a bench test to avoid any reaction in your tank mix.

Happy Thanksgiving 2023! The EarthWorks Podcast team got together for a quick review of what the past season looked like to our agronomy team. We talked about the dry fall weather in parts of the country and a wonderful golf course association meeting that we attended a few weeks ago. It does seem that, post COVID, there is more participation in some of the association meetings across the country and we all agreed that’s a good thing.

One of our favorite clients had a few setbacks on a recent grow in because of high salt water usage. Sodic water can be the breaking point in a grow in, the seed will germinate but not long after that the new seedling is set back so we talked about how to avoid problems like this.

There was a conversation on abiotic winter stress, and the concept of “days under ice”, and the best way to treat this issue.

We enjoyed reviewing some of our observations of the year, but most importantly we wanted to express our Thanksgiving gratitude to all of our clients and podcast listeners.

Kevin Hicks with Jeff Jensen, Mike Huck and Gerald Flaherty

We took this podcast in a little different direction by combining clips from previously recorded interviews with Jeff Jensen, SW Regional Field Staff Rep for the GCSAA and Mike Huck of Irrigation & Turfgrass Services. Then we brought back our friend Gerald Flaherty, CGCS to talk about a new technology that his company, taskTracker, launched this year.

By having clips from Jeff and Mike before bringing Gerald into the conversation, we were able to set the table for the launch of turfRad soil moisture technology that’s offered exclusively through the Task Tracker platform. This groundbreaking technology will help users dial in their water use to improve playability and reduce the cost of irrigation water. Gerald and Kevin Hicks have been talking about this technology for a while and it's exciting to see them finally get it launched. It’s very powerful and can help users save money and water.

There is a little bit of visual to this podcast, so the YouTube version may be helpful for the tail end of the interview with Gerald. It may be helpful to watch it on that platform as well. Thank you for your continued support of the podcast and we hope you enjoy this episode.

As we travel the country lecturing about Biological Soil Management one of the most common questions asked at our meetings is on the topic of humic acids. When classes are asked “what are humic acids,” one of the most common carbon inputs in turf fertility products today, few can give much detail as to why they are so common and what they do for our soil programs.

In an early EarthWorks Podcast we interviewed our chemist, Mr. Lawrence Mayhew, who is a world renowned expert about what he refers to as humic substances. Humic acids were the original “snake oil” when we started EarthWorks back in the late 1980’s but today there are few fertilizer companies that are not incorporating some form of humate in their products.

In this podcast Lawrence helps explain what a humic substance really is, and talks about the many materials that are not humic substances at all but are being sold as humic acids. A good example is a manufacturer that describes their humic acids as being derived from humus! You would need a mountain of humus to get a few drops of humic acid.

They are not food sources for microbes, but instead a complete finished carbon material. They are structural in nature and provide soil microbes a housing environment, protection from soil elements, and are a very important part of the Biological Soil Management process.

Grant Bezek is the golf course superintendent at the Rutgers University Golf Course in Piscataway, NJ. In this conversation with Jack Higgins, Grant eloquently discuses the mission of Rutgers Golf Course to be inclusive and accessible for the entire Rutgers University community, which includes the surrounding towns. The greenkeeping conversations include a real game-changing technique in managing fairy ring on the golf course.

If you like your agronomic conversations with a healthy dose of US golf history and a dash of Revolutionary War military geography strategy than this is the podcast for you!

In this week’s podcast, Kevin Hicks talks with Tom Cook, retired Associate Professor from Oregon State University. Tom was instrumental in building one of the last remaining turfgrass management programs in the Western US. In the late 70’s, he built a program that instructed and prepared countless superintendents, landscape managers, and sports turf managers.

If you’ve spent any time in the Pacific Northwest, chances are you’ve met numerous students of Tom’s. Perhaps you have even met Tom, since he stays active in the local associations and volunteers at the research facility on the OSU campus.

We had a great conversation about how the industry has changed, and the need for support of universities that send graduates into the field of turfgrass management. OSU is the last 4-year turf program left in the western US.