Lemon Joy dish soap spells tournament time

Summer showed up one day early this year, arriving on July 4th instead of the usual July 5th. We just had our men's member-guest event at Glendale, which is our largest member tournament of the season. One of the things we do in preparation of the tournament is to spray our fairways, tees, and approaches with Lemon Joy dish soap. I know this sounds crazy, but when mixed with some iron and fertilizer, it makes the sprayed areas shine. We combine 12 ounces of soap, 4 ounces of iron, and .10lb of nitrogen fertilizer in 1.5 gallons of water, and spray that rate per 1000 square feet of turf. In total, we spray 150 gallons of soap.

The spray tank holds 300 gallons,

so we first fill it about 3/4 full of water. Then add the liquid fertilizer and iron, the soap is added last. Since the mixture in the tank is constantly stirred with air agitators, we have to use a product called "No Foam" to prevent the soap from producing lots of foam.

As soon as the tank mixture is sprayed, you can see the shine from the soap. The photo below is taken from #18 fairway looking down to #17 fairway that is one half sprayed. Look how the sprayed area is so much darker in color than the non sprayed fairway. It takes until the next day for the turf to show the color of the added iron and nitrogen fertilizer. After 24 hours, the effect of the three products combined is stunning.

When the sun is shining on the sprayed areas, you have never seen shining power green color like this before. We mow the fairways with a right and left pattern, and when the color of the light and dark mow lines jumps off the suface and hits your eyes, all you can say is WOW! For a big event, you want the golfers to get something extra from their golf experience, and this is it. The color lasts for about five to seven days, but during that time, it doesn't get any better than this.