Product Profile: Jan. 1998, Military Training Applied to Lawn Care

After 27 years with the U.S. Marine Corps, Gary Cooper retired in 1986 to focus on his lawncare business, Cooper’s Lawn Aeration Service, which he started in 1973.

With 7 million square feet to maintain each year, Cooper’s crew visits most customers eight times a year. The company’s program in-cludes two fertilizer and weed control applications in the spring and “Roots and Iron” treatments in the summer for the primarily turf-type fall fescue properties it handles.

“We’ve found that when this stuff is applied four times, it quadruples the root mass of what you’re growing in a one-year period,” he said.

“They call the tidewater area the fungus capital of Virginia,” continued Cooper. “If you go on any lawn at any time during the summer, you’ll find brown patch. We also have problems with dollar spot, fusarium and Pythium. So we offer fungus control on a 30-day basis during the summer. We’ve used a host of products, but the problem with most of them is that they only last two weeks.”

Last year, Cooper used ProStar® Fungicide for the first time. His crews applied the AgrEvo product at the lowest labeled rate, using a hand-held, double-wand sprayer at a pressure of 45 psi. Cooper found the treatment gave him extended control for up to 30 days at 90 percent effectiveness.

“We felt ProStar gave us the best control of brown patch we’ve ever found,” Cooper noted. “Labor savings were tremendous because we sprayed monthly instead of every two weeks. We feel confident applying the material up to 30 minutes before it rains and resuming spraying as soon as the rain passes. Plus, the water-soluble packaging is excellent.”