The EarthWorks Podcast

The 2024 GIS Trade Show and Conference was one of the most successful and enjoyable shows in many years. The buzz was steady for two days, we had the pleasure of seeing old friends and meeting new friends, and the EarthWorks floor party was the event of the season! Once again, the EarthWorks Podcast team of Kevin Hicks, Jack Higgins and Joel Simmons had the opportunity to do a live podcast from th...

We met Cory Blair in the late 1990’s when he was a superintendent, today he is the Business Development Manager for Capillary Flow. His company is best known for their bunker program known as Capillary Concrete. The Capillary Concrete process for bunkers is a hardscape system where the concrete is applied over a drainage system and then sand is laid over the top of this porous material. This allow...

Ever wonder what it would be like to manage an NFL and MLB facility at the same time? Ryan Bjorn does both in New England for the New England Patriots football team and the New England Revolution soccer team. He manages 6 grass practice fields, 3 for each team, and the Gillette Stadium artificial field. Days after the Patriots finished their last game in early January the Revolution started practi...

On this week’s podcast, we talked with Greg Baer, principal of The Baer Design Group, irrigation design firm that primarily serves the Pacific Northwest. We discussed the latest in irrigation design and irrigation technology and how it’s changed over the years. Greg weighed in on the pitfalls and steps to success when considering an irrigation renovation. We also discussed the steps a turf manager...

When Vincent started a small microgreens farm in Hawaii he was not sure of how to be a farmer! Fortunately he discovered the ACRES USA publication and traveled halfway across the country to participate in the ACRES conference where he had the chance to meet the founding partner of EarthWorks, Jerry Brunetti. Vincent tells many great Jerry stories and talks about how he discovered how a soil really...

A constant curiosity and deep love for plants seem to be at the root of Blooming Beds’ success. However, in talking with the owner and entrepreneur Wayne Jackson, it is evident that his intelligence and business acumen that are the engine driving the success. Wayne uses the phrase, “extract the full ornamental value from the plant.” That is something that is easy to say, and in merely thinking abo...

At EarthWorks we have created a year end tradition of bringing the entire agronomy team together to share our thoughts about the events of the year as it comes to a close. This year we talked about everything from the weather to the agronomic issues we saw across all corners of the country. We had some laughs, solved a lot of problems, and took the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported u...

This week's podcast dips back into the past to highlight two great guests, Jay Lo Monaco of Paul’s Best Lawn Care and Pete Bachman of Pebble Beach. The clips are each a little different in their subject matter. Jay and I talk a lot about business and cultivating passion into your marketing approach. Pete and I have a great time reminiscing about college days and we each talk a little bit about our...

Meet Mike Kerns, Director of Turf and Grounds at San Diego State’s Snapdragon Field. Mike manages one of the busiest sports facilities in the country in beautiful San Diego. Finding things to keep busy hasn’t been an issue this year! They hosted a total of 62 events at the 2 year old stadium, up from 12 in the first year. We talked about the challenges of going from football, to soccer to rugby, t...

We brought back Lawrence Mayhew, the EarthWorks Chemist, to talk about the chemistry of tank mixing. In today's turf world, with limited labor forces, we are seeing tank mixes getting bigger and bigger in terms of how many products are going into a tank. This can become quite a problem chemically and many turf managers are getting into tank mix issues. We see clogged nozzles or tanks that gel up a...

Happy Thanksgiving 2023! The EarthWorks Podcast team got together for a quick review of what the past season looked like to our agronomy team. We talked about the dry fall weather in parts of the country and a wonderful golf course association meeting that we attended a few weeks ago. It does seem that, post COVID, there is more participation in some of the association meetings across the country...

We took this podcast in a little different direction by combining clips from previously recorded interviews with Jeff Jensen, SW Regional Field Staff Rep for the GCSAA and Mike Huck of Irrigation & Turfgrass Services. Then we brought back our friend Gerald Flaherty, CGCS to talk about a new technology that his company, Task Tracker, launched this year. By having clips from Jeff and Mike before...

As we travel the country lecturing about Biological Soil Management one of the most common questions asked at our meetings is on the topic of humic acids. When classes are asked “what are humic acids,” one of the most common carbon inputs in turf fertility products today, few can give much detail as to why they are so common and what they do for our soil programs. In an early EarthWorks Podcast we...

Grant’s stories have great detail and are quite interesting. He eloquently discuses the mission of Rutgers Golf Course to be inclusive and accessible for the entire Rutgers University community which includes the surrounding towns. The detailed green keeping conversations are really valuable especially his accounting of a real game changing technique in managing fairy ring on the golf course. If y...

In this week’s podcast, Kevin Hicks talks with Tom Cook, retired Associate Professor from Oregon State University. Tom was instrumental in building one of the last remaining turfgrass management programs in the Western US. In the late 70’s, he built a program that instructed and prepared countless superintendents, landscape managers, and sports turf managers. If you’ve spent any time in the Pacifi...

Biological Soil Management is a “soil first” agronomic philosophy that relies on carbon based fertilizers to feed needed microbial populations. The sports turf industry can be tough on the soil when there are forty thousand set of feet running over the golf greens or dozens of sports teams playing up and down the field. Biological Soil Management starts by first balancing the soil chemically so th...

Jedd Newsome has been following a Biological Soil Management program, on his golf course, for almost 15 years. He has cut his fertility inputs back by over half! Jedd shares how he heard about the concepts in a Soil First Academy, and how he didn’t believe that you could cut back as much as was suggested. But he has actually cut back more than the Academy promised. This was a great conversation th...

Ryan Higgins has had a strong career working at some of the best golf courses in the Mid Atlantic. He recently became the “Head Guy” at TPC Potomac, outside of Washington DC, perhaps the toughest place in the country to grow cool season grasses. Ryan worked with Pete Wendt for several years, most recently as a golf course superintendent at Congressional Country Club where he was able to see their...

For the last three years a construction project has been going on at North Jersey Country Club. I highly recommend checking out the Instagram profile for @James_Surico, Senior Assistant Superintendent at NJCC, to check out the beautiful drone shots and golf course views. On this podcast, James and Dan tell the full story including some low moments over the last few years. There is a lot of talk ab...

Kevin Hicks and Joel Simmons speak with Bill McKibben, agronomist extraordinaire, author and friend. This episode is the start of a series on how to read soil, paste and water tests. Bill is the the agronomist at Logan Labs and he has played a major role on the EarthWorks team for years. Learn how a soil test report can be interpreted and how the Albrecht model of base saturation should be used. V...

On this week’s podcast, Kevin Hicks interviews Lew Sharp of T-2-Green, one of the premier producers of bentgrass seed in the golf course industry. Lew shares with us how he got into the turf industry at an early age, and how he has done everything related to golf course maintenance. His role, as consulting agronomist, has taken him around the world helping superintendents with grass selection and...

Jerry Brunetti and Joel Simmons founded EarthWorks in 1988 and together they built a leading soil and plant fertility company. Jerry, who we lost to cancer in 2014, was one of the leading voices in sustainable agriculture and was a prolific speaker and writer. In this podcast we share a talk Jerry gave at an Acres USA seminar in the late 90’s. It is introduced by Fred Walters, EarthWorks Podcast v...

Jason started his career as a teenager at Stow Acres Country Club, left for a while, got a turf degree, and then came back. When his boss and mentor told Jason he was leaving, he applied for the job and at the age of 24 became the superintendent. After several years as a superintendent, he asked his owner for an electronic “Jobs Board” and was turned down, so he built his own that he called TurfCl...

Kevin Pryseski has been in the golf business since he was in high school and is now preparing for retirement. When you start your career in the transition zone of the mid-Atlantic states you can grow grass anywhere. After several years in the Baltimore Maryland market, Kevin picked up and moved 3000 miles away to northern California and has spent the past 20+ years at two courses north of San Fran...

Brian O’Malley from River Vale is an excellent Superintendent and really fun EarthWorks podcast guest! The EarthWorks podcast is very diverse - we host guests from all different backgrounds and get into some far out discussions. But it’s also nice to have an episode that really connects the dots of how to use EarthWorks products to make a big difference in everyday green keeping. Brian and Jack ge...