The Plant Health Triangle

As a superintendent, I found this exercise to be a fun way to start conversations around the complexities of plant health. What I now refer to as the Turf Dietitian nonagon puzzle quickly became our most important educational tool for aiding assistants and interns on their journey to becoming superintendents.

When you start to get down to the root cause of where issues on our grounds come from, you will realize there could be a million reasons why the health of the turf is less than perfect. Familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of plant life, but learn to accept that some factors become more predictable than others.

When you were in school, did they mention that the ability to keep a healthy balance in this puzzle would be a key factor throughout your career? As things are going well, we tend to take for granted how job security and the fixability of the budget are directly affected by these challenges.

Here is an example:

1. Your greens are old and hold too much water, causing improper drainage because the organic matter is high and the soil structure is inadequate.
2. Without an efficient drainage system, the level of oxygen is low.
3. As oxygen levels lower, the population of microorganisms lowers.
4. A lower level of microorganisms lowers the production of food for the plant to feed off.
5. A nutrient-deficient plant will be in a constant state of stress.
6. The only way to keep a plant in a constant state of stress alive is with inputs like chemicals and fertilizers.

When perfection is unrealistic, your goal is to get your plant as close as possible. A well-balanced plant health triangle will not require chemical or fertilizer inputs.

The Rules or The Law of Equal and Opposite Reactions

The goal of any turf professional is always to grow a healthier plant. Yet everything done to positively or negatively inhibit one side of the central triangle will ultimately affect the other two sides equally.

Positive impacts = healthy plant         Negative impacts = stressed plant

The three factors that affect any side of the plant health triangle are soil properties, human impact, and environmental influences. Many factors are associated with balancing each side of those individual triangles, which means each of the three sub-triangles under plant health must be balanced too.

The real puzzle is out on the course, and this graphic shall guide you in coming up with different ways of solving it. There’s nothing wrong with incentivizing your crew to become critical thinkers and problem solvers. Have fun with this. Get creative! Will it be easy? A rubrics cube has 6 sides. This puzzle has 9 sides.

Written by Mike Hamilton, CCA & President of Turf Dietitian

Edited and submitted by Tyler Sherwood, Accounts & Marketing Director