“Greenkeepers can find themselves getting bogged down with all the hype and trends that abound in our industry”
Marsh orchids are now firmly established on the site
not much fun when the turf is dying in front of your eyes.
Because of time constraints during construction, the decision was taken by management to turf rather than seed greens. It was that decision that would cause us the biggest problems for many years after construction had finished. All the greens were turfed during the
drought of 1989, without the irrigation being fully operational. Despite our best efforts, ten of the greens died off and we had to strip the turf and relay new turf. I remember that, on the 10th green before it was lifted, we had a potato plant growing as a weed through the many cracks in the dead turf! This was a stressful time for all of us. With the decision taken to relay, we struggled to find a turf producer who was still prepared to lift turf and supply. We did, however, find a local grower who was growing turf on clay and was prepared to supply us with the turf we needed. Although we knew that importing a turf
grown on clay would give us problems, we had no choice, so we decided, in the first winter, that we would embark on a massive soil exchange programme, for as long as it would take, to remove as much clay as possible, this would hopefully reduce the risk of impeded water movement and stunted root development.
Several pieces of kit had to be bought to help with the programme, namely a Sisis Technicore with large 19mm hollow tines, a Richard Long drop spreader and
a Sisis Oscar brush to move the sand into the holes. We carried out this operation several times a year, and continued doing so for as long as it took to break the layering up. This took many years and lots of hard work. There is
Yellow rattle encourages other wildflowers to establish
still some evidence, deep down in the rootzone, that there was such a problem, and we still suffer from less than perfect water infiltration rates.
Although it was costly and time consuming, and at times very disruptive to golf, it was work that could not be ignored as we would have stored problems up for the future.
One very valuable lesson came out of all this hard work - which was carried out by myself and the different members of my team over the years - you need to understand the importance of creating a healthy growing medium for your grass. I tried every method known to man, and some new ones, to speed up the process of soil exchange and, consequently, thatch management. When you undertake such extensive work, you can gain a deeper knowledge of soil mechanics and management. Every day would throw up new challenges, and solutions had to be found, something that everybody was encouraged to think about and develop
their own lines of thought on. As the soil exchange programme continued, and showed signs of having a positive effect on the sward quality, I started to think about fertiliser inputs and looked closely at the make-up of the mineral fertilisers we were using at that time. We were suffering from black layer due to water percolation rates being slower than you would expect on a modern USGA construction. This was obviously due to the clay import layer. There was not a lot of information around at this time regarding black layer, and the associated smell of rotten eggs (hydrogen sulphide), something that was beginning to develop. As I looked deeper into the subject, it was clear that alongside thatch control, water movement and soil management, fertiliser or, more specifically, cheap fertiliser could have a negative effect on the well-being of the rootzone and the plants we try to grow in it. By cheap fertiliser, I mean fertiliser that is loaded with sulphur and mineral salts, these elements can contribute to the occurrence
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