Course Maintenance update

Course Maintenance

Firstly, may I take this opportunity to thank all the members for letting us carry out the work this week, by staying away from the course it has made our jobs so much more efficient in achieving what we have done.

I will now explain what we have achieved in more detail. Not only have we carried out essential maintenance on the greens, but we have also scarified and the tees and approaches.

The main goal before the start of the week was to scarify, micro core, topdress and overseed the greens. However, firstly we had our visit from Emma Beggs from the STRI to carry out the performance testing. It was clear on that Monday morning that the greens were visually showing signs of stress, although the testing results of firmness, moisture and smoothness were very positive.

Therefore, we decided to just verticut the greens (which is basically a mini scarify but not as deep into the turf), micro core, top dress and seed the greens. We have purchased a set of Quadblock tine holders for our Procore machine. This means we can have up to 60 small tines on the machine at once, taking slightly more out than normal, but recovery will be quick. It also means that we can travel faster with the machine, making the job quicker.

Once the greens were verticut, we then micro cored and allowed the cores to dry on the surface. Over the two days we did this we had glorious weather.

Figure 2. A close up of the organic matter, which acts as a sponge and stops water penetrating below

Figure 3. Cores left on the surface to dry. Areas such as the clubhouse or greens surrounded by trees took longer to work on.

Once they were dry, we then ran the dragmat over the greens to break up the cores and remove any dressing from the organic matter.

Figure 4. Dragmat breaking up the cores. This allows the sandy material to fall back to the green, leaving just the thatch to pick up

Then the greens were lightly verticut again to pick up all the thatchy material left.

Figure 5. Removal of thatchy cores and leaf litter from the verticut

Once this operation was complete, we overseeded the greens with approximately 2kg of Bent seed per green. This does not sound very much, however, if you consider that there are 10,000 bent seeds in a gram, that is a lot of seed going out in one operation. The seed goes into the verticut lines and core holes and will start to germinate in the next couple of weeks.

Figure 6. Surface ready for dressing.

The greens were then also topdressed at the same time. We have used around 22 tons of material so far on the greens. I say so far, as we feel it will be necessary to top some of them up next week, and they will receive a dusting of dressing where needed.

The sand is dragged into the surface and acts as a carrier for the seed. We have created thousands of tiny plant pots for the seed to germinate in. Bent seed should not be sown too deep as it is tiny, but the good thing about it is its resilience. It will sit in the ground and germinate when it is ready. Bent grass is much more tolerant to heat, shade, disease and provides a much better playing surface.

The height of cut will now be raised ever so slightly to aid germination and give the greens less stress in their time of recovery. They will also be given another granular feed to help them recover as quickly as possible. This will go down on Monday next week.

Figure 9. Finished product. Now recovery begins.

Overall, the work went as smoothly as possible and again we could not have been as efficient as we were without the assistance of the membership not playing.   

During this week we also took the opportunity to scarify the approaches and tees, again to rip out unwanted thatchy material. (A few of the very small, hard to reach tees were not done for safety reasons). The approaches were also lightly dressed to aid the thatch dilution.

We have also had a visit this week from two contractors. Firstly, KPM drainage contractors, who are completing the 2nd hole drainage project, delayed from springtime.

Secondly, Bancrofts have been in to spike the fairways and a few other selected areas. This will be of major benefit going into autumn. The subsurface on the fairways is still very dry and so the spiking will allow moisture to penetrate further down the profile, as well as giving channels for roots to grow deeper.