GOLF
where possible! I want to hollow-core more often than the powers that be will allow, but when I talk about hollow-coring I tend to get screeches of horror. They want us to only core late season, which isn’t ideal.” Whilst in mid-conversation, I asked Colin if he has a problem with thatch in the greens? “I wouldn’t say we have a major problem with it now because there are many ways to aerate, be that needle tines or scarifying, which we carry out on average every six weeks. It’s a matter of whether the grass is tolerant to it; and what the greens will take as much as anything. We hit them in the spring with a major scarify. We also have a maintenance week in mid-July, which is something I managed to get introduced many years ago, which is often questioned by the committee and members. I think this is partly because committees often change and, just as you manage to educate them and get them on board, some resign, and new faces come along and you have to explain it all over again!”
In July, we will needle tine, scarify, overseed and top-dress. Annually, I try to get at least four or five reasonably heavy
topdressings of pure sand on. We have now gone to pure sand due to the cost of buying an 80/20 compost. It is ludicrous what the suppliers charge for a bit of soil!” Colin’s feeding regime on the greens has not changed much over the years as soil samples have not varied that much, and the cost factor of fertiliser itself also comes into play. He also looks back at the various chemicals he was spreading forty-five years ago. “We don’t use granular often, other than at the beginning and maybe the end of the season. I’m very much a trickle feed man as I have favoured this over the years. I spray little and often mainly with natural organic fertilisers.”
“Some years ago, I introduced the compost tea programme. The one thing that shocks me, thinking back to 1974 when I started my career, is that I was using Mercil fungicide, and mercerised lawn sand which both had an element of mercury within! When I think back to then and what I know about it now, it’s frightening. At sixteen years old you don’t know about these things. The first job I ever did - on a wet Monday morning in July - was to help the head
greenkeeper spread lime on the greens. And there were other products, such as Cydane, for worm control. Again, lethal stuff, and it’s quite scary when I think back to the controls we had then and the health and safety we didn’t have or wasn’t made aware of. I should be glowing in the dark by now!” “Going back to Mercil, it definitely did what it said on the tin. It controlled disease for months on end, controlled moss, weeds and worms, but what was it doing to the environment? It was basically sterilising the soil. As Rovral Green was being introduced in the UK, I was moving over to Holland. I was told, from the beginning, that there are no fungicides over here; they are banned. This was a bit of a shock to the system, having always had something to rely on. So, I had to change my whole way of thinking almost immediately. All I had was iron sulphate as a turf hardener to try and stem off disease.”
“When we built the new course with the USGA greens, the establishment was fantastic, and we had beautiful fescue/bent greens sward. Then, about nine months in, we got Take-All and, within the space of
I have been incorporating more bent grasses as I find I’m just fighting a losing battle with fescues with the heights of cut not being suitable for it
40 PC February/March 2020
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