“We should all consider what impact we are having as greenkeepers on the courses we look after”
Temporary custodians of a valuable landscape
and trends that abound in our industry.
Thankfully, I
eventually gravitated towards organic fertilisers, and
A small flock of Canada geese have made the course their home
of black layer. For a while, I got quite obsessed with how much sulphur was in some fertilisers, and would swap from one brand to another trying, in vain, to control results.
I used soil analysis to test the levels of sulphate, iron, CEC and all the other parameters found when carring out soil analysis. Soil analysis, although an important tool, is no substitute for observation and experience; these two things give you confidence in what you are trying to achieve. Instinctively, I knew things were still not right, as I would get inconsistent results with peaks and troughs in greens quality being the norm. Couple this with the soil exchange programme going on, and the fact that the greens were still very young and pretty sterile when looking at the soil microbe and fungi count, and you get a picture of how difficult the greens were to manage back in the good old days! This is a situation that many greenkeepers can find themselves in, striving to improve greens quality and getting bogged down with all the hype
everything started to come right. I felt this approach would simplify everything, and would
complement what I was trying to achieve on the greens and give me consistent long lasting results.
It is easy to get confused with the vast
array of information and products that are available today, I have always been a great believer in keeping it simple and finding an easier way to manager things. For years, nature has provided everything that is necessary for healthy plant growth, provided the plant is happy to grow in the habitat it has been placed in. Specific species of plants develop and dominate certain habitats over long periods of time. We need to understand this principle if we are going to encourage plants that are suited to growing in nutrient poor, free draining soils, i.e. bent fescue. After all, these are the species that are coveted above all others and are dominant on our links and moorland courses.
It is not by coincidence that they are
there, they are hardy and well accustomed to the environment they have evolved in. Other species cannot get
established easily, unless the conditions change and tip the balance in their favour, something that can happen all to easily on a golf green, i.e. watering, fertilising, reducing heights of cut, spraying fungicides.
My ethos, when it comes to golf greens management, is to provide food in its most basic form (not over refined or tinkered with), i.e. organic. Let the nitrogen cycle do its work, let all the microbiology get on with what they do best. Provide a healthy growing medium with as much air as you can get into your greens, without disturbing golf to much. This will allow the plant to make use of
the products that the bugs have been busily producing, and then things start to fall into place and you begin to wonder what all the fuss was about. That is my theory but, of course, life is never that simple yet, if you get the foundations of your greens working properly, this affords you more time to concentrate on the other challenges that this glorious job throws at us. After using mainly organic feeds for ten years, I have recently started to apply compost tea to my greens. I feel that the greens are at a stage when compost tea might prove beneficial if used over a prolonged period. I will assess its affect on the health of the rootzone against benchmark pointers that I have in place on the greens, i.e. photos and measurements taken over several years. One interesting benchmark I have is the annual occurrence of dollar spot on
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YOUR SUCCESS - OUR SPECIALTY 25
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