Golf
A relatively new concept, introduced over the last few years, puts temperature at the very heart of a fertility programme. It is an idea that has been pushed by two prominent American agronomists; Micah Woods and Larry Stowell. British based agronomist, Greg Evans MG, took an interest in the topic a few years ago and has implemented it in his day role as Course Manager of Ealing Golf Club. In this article, he shares his experiences of Growth Potential and how they ‘tweaked’ the fertility programme with impressive results
Growth Potential
Are your greens reaching theirs? A
t Ealing, we aim to produce championship standard greens all year round with a minimum stimpmeter reading of 10.5 feet during the playing season (the spring meeting on the 4th May to the autumn meeting on the 7th September). 10.5 minimum is a daily goal and everything needs to be 'just right' for us to achieve it. To have greens running smoothly and quickly, a lot of things have to be in place. The greens need to be firm, so drainage must be good, and organic matter must be controlled. The weather also has to be kind and, thankfully, last year we had a good summer. However, one of the most crucial elements which we learnt about at college is a good growing pattern. Over the years, I’ve sat in on numerous seminars and listened to lots of speakers talking about the
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‘magic line’. This is where the growth pattern is on an even keel and you cut out the peaks and troughs. However, even though I understand it, I’ve never really found out how to achieve it. We all talk about fertiliser
programmes - everyone’s is slightly different - but is there a perfect fertiliser programme? Too little nutrition leaves the plant under stress and too much encourages thatch and disease. Finding the magic line is very difficult.
In very simple terms, the grass plant needs four main things to make it happy. Of course, other factors come in to it, but if you get the sunlight, soil, moisture and temperature right, you won’t go far wrong. Sunlight can be controlled to
some extent through cutting trees back or introducing lighting rigs, such as modern football stadia - if you have the
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