Technical
Gravel carpet laid “
Main greens being cored
We immediately found that the Poa did germinate, but didn’t do much else. It sort of just stood there for a few weeks in a ‘Bonsai’ sort of state. The bentgrass came through very quickly, but didn’t stay around for very long once the Poa woke up!
importance of the grow-in is often underestimated; it is common not to have any budget for it at all! The grow-in can make or break a project and should be planned for in the same way as the design and construction. The focus for the first few weeks was on
feed, water and dressing. We had twelve weeks left to get the green up to championship standard.
One of our seasonal assistants, Wes Lenihan,
was given the opportunity of supervising the grow-in. With labour tight, Wes put in many additional hours and I’m sure that the end product would not have been to the same quality without his work. Our first target for the green was to create
density. However, we immediately found that the Poa did germinate, but didn’t do much else. It sort of just stood there for a few weeks in a ‘Bonsai’ sort of state. The bentgrass came through very quickly, but didn't stay around for very long once the Poa woke up! To give you a clearer picture of the grow-in,
here is the programme we followed for the first eight weeks:
- Heavy hand dressings with pure sand every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help dilute the thatch layer (which comes with Poa cores), firm the top surface and even it out
- Feeding programme - a combination of granular and foliar, starting with granular (ammonia/sulphate), followed by foliar the following week, then back to granular. These
bounced off one another for that period
- Greens rolled before sand dressing for the first few weeks. After two weeks, it had the first cut, using a Toro Flex 21 set at 6mm with no boxes. Once grass coverage was attained, it was cut before every sand dressing (three times a week)
- Intense watering to begin with, using a Rainbird valving-head system, the same as on our other greens. To start with, they were set on a four hour cycle with 2mm of water applied each time. It then decreased to a six hour cycle after the first week, reducing further to a more traditional approach once we were cutting regularly
No seed heads!
The most interesting thing I discovered was that, once the cores went down, we had zero seed heads. When we laid the cores I expected, and actually wanted, a flush of seed heads as I felt it would improve density. It didn’t happen and I can’t really explain why. Perhaps, because it was watered and fed well, it was happy and content. Poa tends not to seed if it is happy.
Final grow-in and opening
At around the eight-week grow-in stage, with four weeks to go before opening, we started to ease off on the intensity of the feeding, watering and dressing programmes and change our mindset from growing to maintenance. Until that time, it had been about germination and gaining a surface. Top growth was required.
Cores being added to the green 112 I PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015
At the end of a long day, the green was given a roll
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