7/12/2021 - By Mike Hess

Whenever I hear about customers using acid products on the golf course, the word ‘acid’ feels like a buzzword. Acid products are common and people use them frequently when dealing with poor water quality, but even still for some reason, whether it’s from nostalgic thoughts of 1979’s Alien or a Bond villain with a vat of acid, that word has a shifty connotation. At least until you look into what the product is and how much it can truly help out a superintendent. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Sexton of Evansville Country Club in Evansville, Indiana, about how he has used these acid products to improve his turf’s health by lowering his irrigation water’s pH level.

Acid seems to be something of a buzzword in conversation. What products are being referred to when acids are mentioned?

I’ve been using the Harrell’s Neutralizer 15-0-0 product, which is normally what people mean when they mention ‘acid’ in regard to turf maintenance. I have been asked a lot of questions about it and I don’t have a lot of answers, because it’s rained so much the last two years that I haven’t had to use it for an extended period of time.

The turf has been naturally recovering over the last few years?

Yes, and the turf is happier, the turf looks better, the turf is greener. It seems like the water percolates in the soil better now that it’s being treated. I take the pH of it a lot, the water pH when I’m hand watering, to see what the acid is doing in the pipelines. And the water clarity from it, if you take a measuring cup and a big scoop out of the lake and then you do one out of the hose, the water clarity is so much different.

What then, does spark the need for a neutralizing product?

The sodium levels and the bicarbonate levels of our water, particularly during the summer months just get really really high. I have always struggled with rooting on my golf greens and I felt like it would be a tool, an advancement, to help us with that. I feel like it has helped, but the thing I have noticed is the rapid decrease in fertility after the first year, with the releasing of the material that’s bound up in the soil to feed the plant. So, our fairway fertility has gone down from a pound and a half annually to around a half a pound or ¾ of a pound. Just because every time we water, we release tied up material in the soil to the plant. My fairways never used to grow a whole lot because I backed off on my nutrition, but last year they tended to grow a little bit more than normal, just based on clippings laying around. I think it’s just because that water is encouraging bound up nutrients to be released from the soils. You want to use neutralizing products when your water quality is poor, which 98% of people’s is.

When do you normally treat and what is the healthy pH that you’re targeting?

I use Neutralizer 15-0-0 a lot in the summer cause that’s when the water quality is at its worst, but I’ll treat all year round because, *chuckles* I can afford to do it. My irrigation water pH is about 8.4 and we try to treat it down around 6.8 – 7. You know, the pH of rain is 5.5, which is the ideal pH for plants. Well we really can’t afford to treat our water down that low, but when your pH gets above 7 bad things start happening to turf. Weaker root system, poor color, poor photosynthetic rate, etc. So, we’re just trying to bump that down closer to 7 and, as I explain to my staff, it’s like irrigating with rainwater every time you water, so that’s what we’re trying to do.

What does the application process look like at Evansville? Does all of your irrigation water come from the lake?

Yes, all of the water comes from the lake and we treat it as it comes through the pipeline. We buy Neutralizer in those big 265-gallon totes. There’s an acid injection pump at the pumphouse and it has a mister nozzle, that actually mists the acid into the water in the mainline as it comes out on the golf course. So, we’re treating the water at the pump station as it comes through. It’s pretty seamless, the mister is adjustable based in flow rate, pH levels, and those kinds of factors.

You mentioned earlier that there has been a lot of rain recently. How have you had to adjust your watering and treatment around that?

That one’s easy, we just haven’t been watering because it keeps raining so much. Like I mentioned, the pH of rainwater is already what we’re looking for, so we really have no need to use those products following a good rain. The weather does our job for us.

In the years you used neutralizing products consistently, did you notice any negative effects?

I really haven’t seen any negatives from using them. This is a weird one which doesn’t have to do with the turf, but it seems like and I can’t guarantee it, but it seems like I have a lot less glue joints that need to be repaired in the irrigation system since I started treating water down. Isn’t that weird? Our system’s kind of old, so we deal with glue joint failure. So, you dig it up and you repair it, well I haven’t had as many of those since I started treating water. I don’t know if the lower pH water is better for the pipe joints than higher pH. I don’t know, it’s just an observation.

How can customers know when Neutralizer is working?

I think just overall turf color, it should be much more green now because you’re releasing bound up nutrients with the better water. Roots get tougher, the grass comes in thicker, and it’s more resilient to the weather. A big change from high pH water. I would recommend more people use Neutralizer to treat their water, but it’s not an inexpensive proposition, that’s why most people don’t do it. But if you can, I can tell you firsthand that it really does improve your turf’s overall quality.

Even if it has been a few years since Evansville used Neutralizer consistently in their irrigation supply, they set the healthy baseline for what the rainwater is now building on. All thanks to the acids. Regardless, Jeff and his staff still keep Neutralizer on hand, armed with the knowledge that it is a reliable alternative for low rain periods.