Steve Dickinson was an innovator in the turf distribution business throughout his entire career. He was the founder of a very successful distribution company, Supreme Turf, in St. Louis, Missouri that focused on the agronomic success of their clients.
Steve earned the title of "Soils Doctor" from many of his client friends and helped many superintendents understand the value of balancing soil chemistry. Steve had the opportunity to work with a local County Extension Agent who had studied under the University of Missouri‘s Dr. William Albrecht. Dr. Albrecht is considered the father of cation balancing in a soil.
Steve talks about visiting golf course superintendents in the 1970’s and 80’s. Even then he talked about CEC and cation balancing, instead of just pH, and started building quite the following. Superintendents started to understand that fertilizers worked better on better soils and Steve helped them understand the importance of applying carbon to the soil.
In the late 1970’s the only “organic” fertilizers readily available were bio-solids, but through the years he was able to see the growth of carbon based fertility. He became an early adopter of the philosophies of EarthWorks and continued to manage soils from a cation perspective. Even today, during retirement, Steve still gets calls to make “Doctor’s" visits to golf course superintendents.