Welcome to the Washington State University Research Trials Page.

When I first moved to Washington, I attended a seminar on cool season pythium.  I was a little skeptical of the whole idea of pythium being active during lower temperatures.  Nathan Stacey, a graduate student from WSU gave the presentation and Gwen Stahnke was the lead professor.  After the presentation I spoke to them individually and found out that the companies that were funding the research were also funding Nate's education.  I told Gwen that if there was ever an opportunity for another research project that would have enough funding to cover the education, I would be glad to do it.

A year later, I got a call from Gwen.  She said that she had some conversations with a company that was looking for university research of their organic fertilizer.  After many conversations the opportunity was there for me to do the research and my education would be covered by the research funding.  I am very lucky for this opportunity and grateful to be able to get a Master's degree in Turf.

The past week we have set up a schedule for the next two years to test the new food waste organic product.  I have marked out the back of the putting green where we will be doing the trial plots.  It will definitely have a different look since we are not fertilizing it on the same schedule as the course.  We should start to catch up once the trials begin.  We will have four different trials.  3 lbs. of Nitrogen per year, 4 lbs. of Nitrogen per year, 5 lbs. of Nitrogen and finally my program that I use currently at the club.


The program will measure the respiration of the soil as well as microbial activity in the soil.  We are hoping to show that a food waste organic fertilizer will increase microbial activity, increase turf health and potentially suppress turf pathogens.  It will be an interesting process over the next couple of years. I will use this blog to keep everyone up to date on our findings and post pictures of the progress as we apply the fertilizer.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Justin Ruiz, CGCS, MG
justin.ruiz@email.wsu.edu

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