A tea party, but not the political one...

When I met with Josh Heptig, Superintendent of San Luis Obispo County Golf Operations, I told him that I thought he had an opportunity to create "the first zero waste golf course in the world", and he was intrigued. But then he told me that what he really had been wanting to do was test compost tea on the practice greens. "Ok", I said, "that's easy to do because my daughter and her husband just happen to be in the business of brewing certified organic compost tea". They agreed to provide the tea for a test, and I agreed to do the labor, all with no cost to the county.

In the next few weeks, I started spraying compost tea on one half of practice and nursery greens at Dairy Creek GC in San Luis Obispo, and on Morro Bay GC, both of which are operated by the county. We sprayed tea on the greens about every three weeks for about six months. At the end of the summer, everybody was happy, the greens stayed green, and there had been no significant disease outbreaks where we used the tea instead of pesticides.

We started studying up on compost tea. We learned that compost tea is not fertilizer, it's a solution of microscopic creatures that, when added to the soil or leaves, make it easier for all plants to thrive, including turfgrass.  We learned that the tea can help reduce water usage by 30-50 percent in the first year of use. We concluded that with compost tea, we could reduce or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Put all this together, and we're talking about saving the golf operations a bunch of money.

I want get back to Green Golfer Foundation, here. Green Golfer Foundation is a local non profit organization dedicated to promoting environmental advancement on our local golf courses. But environmental advancement can cost money that course management just doesn't have in their budget. What to do? Well, the first thing a non profit can do is volunteer to help. The second thing a non profit can do is encourage donations, endowments and participation from other interested local environmental groups. And when we volunteer to help or raise funds it's easier to convince course management to take chances on new techniques. The fact is that a non profit can do a lot of things that a county golf, private clubs, or or other for profit public golf operations just can't. Green Golfer Foundation, as a non profit,  is uniquely positioned to help change the environmental practices and public profile of all our local golf operations. And that's a good thing.

In the next installment, I'm going to tell you how we convinced Integrated Waste Management Authority to donate $20,000 worth of equipment to our zero waste golf ideas. And than I'll tell you how we got the Morro Bay National Estuary Program to donate $10,000 to the effort. This is the work of Green Golfer Foundation...It's working.

take a side trip to see how our zero waste golf project is progressing. http://slocountygolfcourses.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html