Golf
What’s in the shed? John Deere 220E pedestrian mowers x 3
John Deere 2500E greens/tees/surround mowers x 2 John Deere 7500A fairway mowers x 2 John Deere 8800A rough mower
equipment like seeders or compact excavators and share them around. This way, even small clubs can make progress through new projects and possibly gain more members and/or visitors by being seen to be forward thinking. With the right skills and approaches, projects on golf courses don’t need to be costly. I have a course blog which there is a link
to on the club website homepage. The blog is used to help people understand what we are doing on the course and why. I add pictures to each entry, along with a brief explanation of what’s happening. It’s usually used to cover things that are perhaps a bit out of the ordinary, if we’re doing something new or if there’s a project underway. It has been a really useful tool in providing members with information and also helps the greens staff as it answers a lot of questions before they’re asked! The only real way to raise the profile of the industry is through education I think. Using member presentation nights, course
becoming noticeably tighter. By keeping on top of sward refinement this way, we avoid having to use any other means which would be more aggressive and knock back the Fescue we want to promote. Given the proportion of Bent, however, doing some form of regular sward refinement is unavoidable, and this way usually keeps stress to a minimum.
The cold and dry springs we typically get cause the Poa to become stressed and start to seed heavily. We try to counter this with an application of Primo Maxx as early as we can and then a good proportion of the remaining seed is taken off by the mowers following grooming.
Feeding is generally light and the greens receive 40-55Kg of N per year. The greens are low in several elements and these are targeted with the granular base feed in spring. Feeding throughout the season is then primarily through the sprayer using combinations of Sea-nymph seaweed, sulphate of ammonia, urea, phosphite, magnesium sulphate and liquid fertiliser. We keep iron use to a minimum as there is already a very high proportion present in the soil.
blogs, reports and notices etc. to provide information about what we do and why can go a long way to letting people see what is actually involved in the industry. There are always going to be the few who
are not interested or of the opinion that they already know better, but they will always be in the minority and, who knows, after a few years even they might become converted. Overall, I would consider the industry to
be relatively stable at the moment. I’ve not heard as much about courses in financial difficulties or being threatened with having to close for a while. At the same time, however, it would be good to see some growth, but it is a difficult time for everyone. For me, greenkeeping is reactive and being able to take advantage of spells of good or bad weather, I think it’s important not to stand still and constantly try to make improvements.
Overseeding on greens is done using the John Deere Aercore with ½” solid tines through spring and summer. We broadcast Fescue seed using the fertiliser spreader then spike the greens to around ½” deep. The Aercore has the metal dragmat attached behind it and it rubs the majority of the seed into the holes in one pass. We then topdress the greens using the washed dune sand from Hugh King to fill the holes before brushing and cutting. In autumn, the greens and surrounds are triple passed with the Charterhouse slit seeder to input as much Fescue as possible.
Mowing height on tees and surrounds drops from 10mm in winter to 8mm in summer. The surrounds are basically treated the same as the greens, but they are the weakest part of the course at the moment due to high levels of winter wear and summer traffic, so maintenance here is about to be intensified.
Aeration on the tees follows much the same pattern as the greens/surrounds, as does the grooming of the sward.
The tees here are relatively small, so we feed them a bit more and use Primo Maxx to help
PC AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 I 27
John Deere 4520 tractor and 1 4066R tractor both with front loaders John Deere Aercore 1500 John Deere Progators x 2 John Deere HD200 sprayer John Deere TS gator and 1 CS gator
Toro 3250 greensmowers with Thatchaway verticut units and topdressing brushes x 2 Dakota 410 topdresser Charterhouse 7416 Vertidrain
Charterhouse 1575 Overseeder (borrowed from Kingsbarns Golf Links, thanks again Innes!)
Tru-turf roller Amazone flail collector Ryan Renovaire
Bernhard Express-dual and Anglemaster grinders Greentek Dynaseeder and dynacore units Royer screener Graden scarifier Major flail mower
the sward thicken and heal from divot pressure. We also overseed tees with Barmedal from Barenbrug as the dwarf Ryegrass germinates and fills out very quickly, further helping recovery.
Fairway mowing height is 15mm in winter and down to 10mm in summer. We stripe the fairways but, because they mostly comprise of Sheep and Hard Fescue, the stripes tend to disappear quickly. We do a lot of brushing in spring, while growth is minimal, to give a bit of definition and we have made our own brush and sarrel roller combination to do two jobs in one.
Fertilising on fairways is minimal, if anything at all; usually just some magnesium sulphate and a touch of iron through winter.
We overseed and divot using Bar 20 fairway.
All of our maintained rough is mown at 2” with a 1” collar around greens.
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