Sometimes I forget that some people do take things literally.
Once, after a lengthy explanation about the role of soil wetting agents and still not getting through, I made a remark that how it works is not unlike how detergent works in removing oil when we wash dishes, in fact, I said think of wetting agents as expensive detergents.
Many months later, on my monthly visit, I saw the greens having this splotches of dead grass. They suspiciously look like poisoned grass (remember this website is for the layman) with the leaves still intact but brown in colour. “What happened?” I asked. “Nothing really” said the supervisor, “these blotches just happened”.
“What did you apply?” I said
“Nothing!” he said, starting to sound defensive “I put out wetting agent on the dry spots like you said”
“You did? You watered them in?”
“Of course I did”
“You use the same rate?”
“No, the supplier gave a different rate because we used a different wetting agent”
“Uh. What brand did you use?” I was starting to be a little more worried for the other greens now.
“No brand, I tried to get the best price I could and the supplier told me to take this one because it is the cheapest he had”
“How cheap?” I asked suspiciously.
“It was the cheapest, the supplier said it was as good as detergent. I remembered you said that wetting agent was detergent, so I bought it”
And that was what happened to the greens. Of course, the following day, during the compuslory briefing the Boss, I blamed it on the hot and dry weather.
Note that the damage was specific. The grass beside it had no signs or symptoms whatsoever.
Some weird spraying action going on here…
Fortunately, the greens survived and recovered about two weeks later. For the better. So perhaps, it did work as a wetting agent anyway. Not that I’ll be doing that again. Nope.
Turf Matters 