“Simple, sweeping statements about ‘sustainability’ or by ‘Gingerbread Men’ perhaps need countering or qualifying by more in depth comment and analysis”
operation, so Orpington Golf Centre being Orpington Golf Centre (never closing, never having temporary greens, never banning trolleys, never having tee mats, etc.) a new hole was immediately re cut in the green and returned into play! It was then dressed with two tonnes of sand and dragmatted into the surface. Again the same sand was used for dressing as inserted into the green by the Sand Master so, effectively, seven tonnes was going into and onto every green.
Unusually, this particular week in October was especially dry, so the green was irrigated for a few minutes after completion just to settle in the sand and give a clean appearance to the surface. Nature being nature, about four days later we had a deluge but, to be honest, this was almost perfect timing. The contractors were on site for three days, completing work to nineteen greens at a cost of £6,500. For the material cost during and in the immediate dressing work we used just over 120 tonnes of Redhill 28 sand at a cost of approximately £2,700, which equates to under £500 per green for the total operation. Before elaborating on our aftercare
programmeme, it is well worth stating that we took some measures prior to the operation to make sure the turf was strong enough, healthy enough and as well rooted as possible. Only on one green, in one corner, did we see any evidence of the turf lifting and stretching, leaving a rippled surface. To just pile in with this kind of machinery on weak turf would have been potentially disastrous and taken many months to recover, rather than the almost instant effect we managed to obtain. We actually have a fairly intensive aeration programmeme under normal
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circumstances, but the last aeration we performed, prior to ALS coming in, was mini hollow coring during the last week of August and the first week of September.
I felt it was important to keep up moisture levels, whilst trying to guard against over watering and making the greens too soft, so we continued to hand water the greens, using the wetting agent pellets, and intensified our policy of applying a soil penetrant (Inflo XL) via the sprayer at four week intervals, to tow week intervals through the late summer period.
This is normal practice, not only to eliminate the effects of dry patch, but helps keeps surfaces dry and dew free (frost free in winter), keeps the moisture moving down into the soil (remember we do not have rootzone - our larger particles are normally house bricks) and, subsequently, reduces the risk of disease. In addition we intensified our feeding
programme by just upping the regularity with which we applied our liquid and soluble products. We base these on two simple products, Go Green Plus and the Seavolution seaweed product to which we can then add soluble or liquid elements at varying rates to suit the seasonal conditions. It is probably also worth mentioning that we add Trinexapac-ethyl (Shortcut and now Primo Maxx) as a growth suppressant to the tank mixes, not just to reduce clippings, but tighten down the turf and keep the nutrient in the plant making it tougher and healthier. Another regular additive was, and continues to be, P Kursor, a phosphite product to maintain plant health and help in the fight against disease. In essence, therefore, I felt we had prepared the greens for the mechanical onslaught they were about to undergo. In reality, after the operation, it could
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