DAKOTA’s hardest sale, by accident

October 2009

Ref: Ray Richards Golf Course ’07

In the summer of ’06 around July I think, Dakota wanted to test our new straight peat spreader. It was designed to spread a very light coat of Dakota Peat on the green for customers that can’t get 90-10 Dakota mix in their area. Well, that’s where Dusty came in.

Dusty is a long time friend of Dakota and he runs the Ray Richards Golf Course close by the
Dakota factory.

Now Dusty has been hammered on by Dakota to topdress and aerify with a 90-10 Dakota mix for years, to no avail. It just wasn’t the way he was brought up. He was taught that you always use straight sand. He didn’t need any more organics in his greens. He thought that because we were such good friends that we were just trying to get him to buy something he didn’t need, and he liked the sand better from a pit that didn’t have Dakota mix. We quit trying. We could use his course for anything but that.

The call was made, “Hey Dusty can we try out a new peat spreader on a green?” Dusty said,“Well, no, unless you want to try it on my nursery green, yeah that would be ok.” Be right over. We spread a very light coat on the nursery green and Dusty turned the water on for a couple of minutes and the peat disappeared in to the turf. Thanks Dusty, and we were gone.

Later that fall, Dusty needed a strip on the nursery green to repair another green so he took single strip out of the nursery green, added straight sand back in, seeded it and by late fall the nursery green was completely even again with no sign of the strip.

Spring came and the course started to come back to life. It was still early but the greens were starting to green up nicely. Dusty decided to take the day off and visit out of town thinking everything was going good. Well the sun came out and it got abnormally hot and windy that day. When he got back the next day all of his greens went dormant and were dead. Well, all except the nursery green; it looked the same as when he left. He would never have figured it out except there was this strip in the nursery green that was also dead (see photo above). He called Dakota and said “You guys got to get over here. Just one light coat. I guess that stuff really does work!”

Randy Dufault
Sales Manager
Dakota Peat & Equipment