Greens Reno
We had a great turn out of volunteers for the weekend Reno's. A huge Thank you to all from the Greens staff, without your help we would be still going.
Renovations went very smoothly, there was no lifting and plenty of cores removed and nearly just as much sand added to fill those cores all golfers love so much.
Unfortunately I am still unable to upload pics so a brief description of what we did follows -
Verti - Cut Greens -- This was to achieve 3 outcomes, 1) Remove some excess thatch, 2) To "crack open" the Couch and Saltene encroachment into the greens to allow for better chemical control and 3) create a seed bed for over sowing patches.
Hollow Cored -- We were very aggressive with coring using 5/8 inch tines to a depth of 6 inches, this is part of the alternating cycle of using hallow and solid coring techniques where the solids used during spring are smaller and not as deep. Our objective is simple in Autumn renovations, relieve compaction, improve air and water movement through the profile and prepare the greens for the wet season, ( well we hope for a wet season in any case).
Soil Amendments added -- Along with normal fertiliser application to encourage recovery growth, we also applied Gypsum to increase calcium levels and displace accumulated salts, slow release potassium to increase the strength of the plant. We also added Humus products and Beneficial Micro Organisms as part of our long term strategy to increase root depth and health and give the profile some structure and body.
Top Dressing and Boarding in -- We rounded off the Reno's by top dressing with our own sand, and rubbing into core holes.
We are expecting a good result, the greens will be slow for a couple of weeks before normal conditions resume. As always we realise the impact this work has on your short game, and we trust you realise the need to undertake this important work.
Some observations from the coring - We have increased functional root depth by 5cm, the long term strategy of building the soil profile is clearly working with the profile more consistent, active beneficial micro organism starting to build in numbers which will help overcome some of the nasty ones in the soil. If we improve the plant below the ground level we improve the plant above it, and that has been our aim for the past couple of years and the programs implemented are working.
That's the Reno round up for March 2011, good luck putting and hopefully the ball "bounces" in the right direction.
Renovations went very smoothly, there was no lifting and plenty of cores removed and nearly just as much sand added to fill those cores all golfers love so much.
Unfortunately I am still unable to upload pics so a brief description of what we did follows -
Verti - Cut Greens -- This was to achieve 3 outcomes, 1) Remove some excess thatch, 2) To "crack open" the Couch and Saltene encroachment into the greens to allow for better chemical control and 3) create a seed bed for over sowing patches.
Hollow Cored -- We were very aggressive with coring using 5/8 inch tines to a depth of 6 inches, this is part of the alternating cycle of using hallow and solid coring techniques where the solids used during spring are smaller and not as deep. Our objective is simple in Autumn renovations, relieve compaction, improve air and water movement through the profile and prepare the greens for the wet season, ( well we hope for a wet season in any case).
Soil Amendments added -- Along with normal fertiliser application to encourage recovery growth, we also applied Gypsum to increase calcium levels and displace accumulated salts, slow release potassium to increase the strength of the plant. We also added Humus products and Beneficial Micro Organisms as part of our long term strategy to increase root depth and health and give the profile some structure and body.
Top Dressing and Boarding in -- We rounded off the Reno's by top dressing with our own sand, and rubbing into core holes.
We are expecting a good result, the greens will be slow for a couple of weeks before normal conditions resume. As always we realise the impact this work has on your short game, and we trust you realise the need to undertake this important work.
Some observations from the coring - We have increased functional root depth by 5cm, the long term strategy of building the soil profile is clearly working with the profile more consistent, active beneficial micro organism starting to build in numbers which will help overcome some of the nasty ones in the soil. If we improve the plant below the ground level we improve the plant above it, and that has been our aim for the past couple of years and the programs implemented are working.
That's the Reno round up for March 2011, good luck putting and hopefully the ball "bounces" in the right direction.
