End of Summer update 2017
Weather
Well the summer
defiantly through up some surprises this year, from the dry sunny start to the
season then the wet stormy mid-July and now to the one day nice and hot to the
next pouring down and cold. The weather really does throw us some curve balls
in this country.
What a difference a spray makes
It has been quite evident that spraying a
wetting agent has helped us recover from the drought really well. As we are a
downland golf course we don’t mind hard dry surfaces however we do need to keep
grass cover when the rains come back. We spray once a month when the rain is
falling this could be at 6am or 6pm as soon as we see the rain coming we get
the sprayer out and apply a wetting agent along with some seaweed, the seaweed
is great for drought stress and will help the recovery after drought conditions.
Now we have the sprayer we can apply feed and growth regulator as and when we
need to. Products applied in the right conditions really do work well.
This years renovation Process
August is the best time to aerate as a lot
of people go on holiday and normally the weather conditions are in our favour.
This year we decided to renovate the chipping green one week before we carried
out the work on the rest of the course, this is a good marker for everyone to
see how the recovery is going. Unfortunately the havens opened when we were
carrying out this work but we managed to get it done.
First we hollow tined the greens using
an 8mm hollow side eject tine. (FACT LINE!! these tines are £11.50 each, we
have 30 tines on the machine and they last for about 36 holes) this was carried out
with a walk behind machine. The lucky person who operated this machine walked
24 miles Mainly backwards to complete the job. Next we have a machine to collect all
the cores, this is a lot easier than picking by hand, yes we used to do that!!!
when all the cores have been collected one greenkeeper double scarifed the green
on two different angels, two greenkeepers followed and blew the green with a
backpack blower, blowing as much debris of as possible. And finally the greens
were cut with two hand mowers, each person walked around 30 miles to complete
this task. Once the greens were cut and cleared we top dressed the following
day applying around 1000kg of sand per 500sqm (per average green). This was
brushed into the turf, some going into the holes and some into the scarify
lines. We don’t mind leaving some holes open as the grass grows laterally and will cover
over the holes. (Remember the roots grow in the air within the soil rather than in the
soil). The greenkeepers arrived on site at 0530 on the Monday morning and left
at just after 1900 the same evening. All work was carried out on the Monday
apart from the dressing this was completed on the Tuesday morning. 