help prevent some of the greens from dying off completely
Not only is watering avoided, feeding is rarely undertaken either. There is an application of lawn sand on the greens at the start of every season and a couple of applications of seaweed, other than that, nothing. The club have never sought to install an
automated watering system, they simply do not need one, they let nature takes its course. For the last four years Andy has been working closely with Alistair Beggs from STRI to monitor and to improve the bent/fescue densities in his greens. This work involves oversowing with fescue grasses in the spring followed, in late August, with a second sowing of bents and fescues as part of the autumn renovations. This programme, together with the non feeding and non watering policies, has ensured the poa grasses are always under stress. In fact Andy looks forward to dry summers, as they help the bents and fescues and retard the poa.
Delamere Forest GC Sward Assesment (visual) 15th June 2005
Green Fescue Bent POA York Fog Moss Disease Other 170 260 315
445 510 6 7
PG 10 65 20 Mean
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
810 910
5 5
55 75
15 70 15 5 5 5 5
45 45 80 15 70 45
20 45
15 60 25
10 70 20 5 5
60 35 60 35 70 25 80 10
60 30 65 25
5 5
5 7.11 63.42 27.53 0.89
Alistair visits twice a year to monitor and report on the sward composition. The table above gives details of the percentage of grasses found in the greens.
The low bent grass
populations on a few of the greens were brought about by solid tinning spots, which often became prone to ponding after rain. Andy arranged a programme of localised deep aeration, using a vertidrain machine, to rectify the problems.
0.26 I was amazed to hear that
the greens had only ever been vertidrained twice previously, once in the 1980’s and the other in 2006. Andy and his team have a straightforward philosophy, “We keep things simple here, we just do the basics, the course tends to look after itself ”.
THE course is built on Cheshire sandy loam, all the greens are soil pushed up and have remained the same
5
30 40 28 50 10
2
since they were first constructed. Having well drained soil helps enormously, the club is open 365 days a year, and the greens, tees and fairway are able to cope with the wear and tear generated by the 450 full members plus 5 day members as well. Andy applies wetting agents (Vitax Granular & Beaker triple) on greens and tees to aid rain water infiltration. The granular Primer is applied at the start of the growing season followed up with a monthly application of the Breaker until August. The greens are mowed at
weekends with ride-ons, it takes one member of staff just two hours to cut them all, during the week the greens are cut daily using hand mowers taking 3 staff around 1.5 hours to complete. Apart from a slight variation of 1mm on the greens, there is no difference between the winter and summer grass cutting regimes. The greens are verticut to a depth of 1mm on a fortnightly basis to thin out
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er that gives beautiful stripes.
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11
www.pitchcare.com/re
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