GOLF
Damage caused by badgers
stimp around ten last year. We will try and get a bit more out of them by double rolling for tournament days, but I think the majority of the golfers do not like them too fast.” “Depending on weather and the amount of golf being played, I aim to do as many verti-cuts as possible throughout the year; maybe once every six weeks, to reduce the thatch layer that has built up. To stop Poa from spreading through the greens, we will use the poa buster heads to remove the seeds and then overseed using the Vredo disc seeder. We use a brown top bent grass seed once a year supplied through our captain, who conveniently owns a garden centre and can source it for us a lot cheaper, which is excellent.” “Every six weeks, Will Kidd comes in to verti-drain the greens using his Wiedenmann Terra Spike GXI 10 with half-inch tines at a depth of eight inches. Our verti-drain is only suitable for use on the fairways. I love the fi nish from the GXI and, once we have been back over with the mowers or the roller, the golfers can get back on straight away. We used Will a few times last year, and the members were delighted. Alongside verti-draining, we will hire in the Toro ProCore from Cheshire Turf Machinery to vary the depths and not get
a pan. It is important for us to reduce the number of fungicides we use, so doing all we can to increase airfl ow around the plant can only be a benefi t.”
“Finally, I would like to topdress every six weeks with around three-quarters of a tonne of sand per green. In September, my aim is to hollowcore using half millimetre tines and get them down as far as possible, before applying sixty-tonne of sand - weather permitting of course.” Daniel has taken advantage of Agrovista Amenity’s soil sampling service through Amenity Specialist Chris Knowles. “I have worked with Chris in the past and I trust him, which is essential to me. After the soil samples’ results came back, I asked Chris to put a fertiliser programme together for the greens to include granular and liquid feeds.” “We started our programme in February, when the greens were starting to look pale and hungry, so we applied twenty bags of Absolute Green and the results were incredible; the results are still apparent a month later. In the next few weeks, we will apply the Compo Expert Ferro Top 6:0:12 (+6MgO+8Fe). Both Chris and another greenkeeper have recommended it to me and I have read up on the Agrovista
Amenity website about it. As temperatures begin to rise in April, we will start to go into a more liquid-based feeding programme using InTrench Potassium, GoGreen Energy, E2 Pro Elicitor and Attraxor to regulate growth and help reduce the Poa heads. The programme also includes SeaVolution, Excel wetting agent and GoGreen Plus.” I noticed quite a lot of badger damage around the course near the paths and on some of the bunker bankings. They are becoming a real problem for Daniel and his team. “All we can do is repair the damage they cause, but this takes us away from carrying out other jobs we would like to get on with. Like many courses around the country, wormcasts are a real problem, especially on our fairways, tees and approaches. As you can imagine, trying to cut fairways when it is wet, just means you end up with an inch of mud on your rollers and you constantly have to get off the machine to clean them off , which is a pain. We verti-cut the tees recently to try and get rid of some of the wormcasts that had built up over winter, with them not being cut, and it worked really well. Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about them at the minute and members just have to be made aware we are doing our best.”
- Treat Your Turf
echneat 35
PC April/May 2021
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