AT A GLANCE
Growers: Ryan’s Turf, Reg Ryan
Property: Coolangatta Rd, Berry, New South Wales
Focus: Keeping a growing customer base satisfied all year round
Market: Palmetto Buffalo, Sapphire Soft Leaf Buffalo and Sir Walter Buffalo, Empire Zoysia, Kenda Kikuyu and Kikuyu.
It took seven years working as a mechanic for Reg Ryan to rediscover his calling, but now he says he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Sandra Godwin spoke to this passionate turf grower and learnt how he gave into his calling.
Reg Ryan was a teenager in 1995 when he and his father, Reg senior, started Ryan’s Turf with a paddock of Kikuyu on the family’s 67 hectare (ha) dairy farm near Shoalhaven Heads, south of Sydney.
After working together for 12-months, Reg left to become an apprentice mechanic. He returned in his mid-twenties, eventually buying the business from his parents in 2017.
“Being back on the family farm is great,” he said.
“This place has been in the family since the 1960s when my Pop bought it. To be able to keep it in the family is really important to me and hopefully my son will feel the same.”
During the past two years, he has expanded the area under turf to 28ha, adding several new varieties, and plans to boost it further.
Above: Reg Ryan from Ryans Turf
Reg is keen to put in another 12ha – he just has to persuade Reg senior to relocate the prized breeding stockhorses that occupy those paddocks.
The most recent turf plantings were Empire Zoysia and Sir Walter Buffalo, which have yet to yield their first cuts, although Reg hopes to be able to run the harvester through the Empire Zoysia before Christmas.
Reg says he was encouraged to embrace Empire Zoysia by its growing acceptance and increasing demand.
“Previously, I would buy it in. I’d send a truck up to a couple of TurfBreed growers in Sydney that we deal with,” he explained.
“I’d always try to keep our customers happy and get whatever they need, and there still is a good little mark-up in that. There’s been a couple of developments down here that have gone for the Empire Zoysia due to the low water and low maintenance side of things.
“So that’s what pushed me into going to it. I think it’s going to be the next Buffalo. It will take time for people to be comfortable with spending that little bit of extra money for it but then it will take off.”
Reg said it’s not uncommon for the uptake of new varieties in the region to lag behind metropolitan areas.
“When we started, we only really did the common Kikuyu before Dad made the jump into Palmetto,” he said.
“It took a long time for people in our area on the south coast to want to spend that little bit of extra money – originally they just wanted the cheapest, but now people are starting to take more pride in their lawn; they’re looking for the better varieties.”
Reg said sales were now split 50:50 between the Buffalo and the Kikuyu varieties.
The Ryan’s Turf market is also split 50:50 between homeowners and landscapers, and civil contractors mostly in the Shoalhaven and Illawarra regions.
“We do a lot of civil works, new subdivisions, roadsides and things like that, but we don’t really target a specific market,” he explained.
“We will do anything from 20 square metres (m2) up to a 20,000m2 job, we’re not really picky.”
Ryan’s Turf sold only small rolls until four years ago when Reg lashed-out and bought a Sammut Maxi Roll Harvester.
He also put his mechanical skills to work, building a bobcat attachment for laying the 1.2m by 30m rolls. It proved a wise investment, paying for itself very quickly.
“Our biggest job has been Corpus Christi Catholic High School at Oak Flats in 2016,” he said.
“It was 20,000m2 of high-end maxi rolls using all our own turf over about a three-week period. We did it in stages because they had a little bit of trouble keeping the water up to it.”
Last year, Reg bought a Brouwer JD Robomax Autostacker, which has improved worker safety and made a huge difference to the business.
“The other harvester was getting old and tired and breaking down,” he said.
“Now, because you’re doing it from inside the cab of the tractor, it’s an all-weather machine so it doesn’t matter whether it’s stinking hot, blowing or raining, you’re inside the cab. ….“It’s also allowed us to do more work, safer and faster.”
Turf is usually cut twice a day to ensure orders can be delivered on time the next day.
At least one truck load of turf is cut late in the afternoon so the first truck of the day can leave early the next morning. That’s when cutting begins for the next loads, including orders for on-farm collection.
Fertiliser and sprays are applied every four to six weeks, depending on the weather, and the turf is watered by six Trailco T200 and T250 travelling irrigators as needed – usually in the mornings.
“Being so close to the coast, we’ve always got a little bit of wind, a nor’easter, so we try and water first up in the morning,” Reg said.
“We set the irrigators up and turn them on in the afternoon and I’ll run around in the middle of the night turning them off.”
Water is supplied from a 15 megalitre freshwater dam and Ryan’s Turf has access to 270 kilolitres a day of reclaimed water from the Shoalhaven Heads Wastewater Treatment Plant.
That water is high in chloride and salt, so Reg has a program of soil amendments to make it more friendly to turf. The holding dam is aerated to eliminate chloride and the irrigation pumps inject acid into the water to neutralise the salts before the water reaches the turf.
Apart from African Black Beetle Larvae, also known as Curl Grubs, Reg said the farm does not usually have much trouble with pests or disease. It’s only in the past 18-months that he’s had to apply fungicide for ectotrophic root-infection in one paddock of Sapphire Buffalo.
Soil types vary widely across the farm, from heavy black to soft light brown soil.
“We do have some really heavy, heavy black soils here,” Reg said.
“They’re not sandy loams like you would get up in the Hawkesbury. Poor drainage has given us those issues so we’re trying to get aeration into our soils to try and eliminate that.”
As if he’s not busy enough with the turf, Reg also runs a firewood business which he started “as a little bit of pocket money” while he was working for his father. It has since grown into a significant enterprise that ensures year-round employment for the 10 full-time and casual workers.
“It’s been fantastic for us,” he said. “In winter when the turf is quiet there’s only so many times you can grease the machine and then do whatever. When it’s wet the firewood really takes off, so it’s been really good as an income supplement as well as keeping the boys ticking over.”
Above: Firewood at Ryans Turf
Reg says they reached a new milestone this winter, supplying almost 3000 cubic metres of firewood, thanks in part to government restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“At the start COVID-19 was really good for us and I think it was for a lot of turf farmers,” he said.
“Everyone was at home and there was a rush to finish things not knowing what was going to happen. It was really busy, especially in that lockdown period, and the firewood just took off.
“I think people were panic buying the firewood as well in February-March, even before it started getting cold.
“Everyone else in our area sold out of firewood a couple of months ago. We’ve still got a little bit of stock here, but it really has been a godsend for us to keep our workers busy and in employment.”