Upcoming Green Renovations and Associated Works
I hope this post finds all our members happy and healthy, green renovations are on the way and we all know how our members just love this time of year, happy days ahead !😁
When I last left off, I was bemoaning the frustrating period we went through planning work which eventually was forced to be postponed due the tractor being out of action, we were sweating bricks as we got closer to renovations without the tractor as we use it to load up our native sand for renovations, we need at least week to do this prior to renovations so all sand is ready to go and no delays are experienced.
Thankfully the tractor is back in operation and we have commenced stockpiling sand in preparations just in the knick of time.
Green renovations commence Sunday afternoon 12th March, from 2.30pm and continues through Tuesday 14th. The front 9 holes will close on a progressive basis from 2.30pm Sunday, full course closure Monday and Tuesday.
During the renovation closure all greens will be cored, cleaned off, cores picked up, soil amendments applied, seeded, sanded and rubbed in multiple times. We will also be coring and seeding some green surrounds in preparation for winter, coring aprons and selected tees. These areas will also be sanded.
A huge 2 and half days going flat out to get all these critically important works completed while we have the course to ourselves. With so much renovation work to get through if we didn’t close the course for this important work it would take weeks to complete and just drag on through autumn with greater disruption to play.
Over the past few weeks we have also been attending some important pre renovations works.Namely foreign grass and weed control within the greens.
Multiple product applications for saltine, crab grass and couch grass have been applied, as well as turfing out, plugging and physical removal of small patches. Due to high temperatures, some detrimental effects are expected to greens after product applications, namely in appearance of dry unthrifty turf with some weak patches developing. These symptoms will progressively become more noticeable the closer we get to renovations as we time our applications to achieve our outcomes by the start of coring when recovery then takes place. This is normal and expected, is only temporary and greens will recover through the renovation period.
Saltine patches will also be more visible as the herbicide takes effect, yellowing and thinning, it may appear we have all of a sudden much more saltine in the greens than you thought, we don't, it is simply more visible than normal due to the above applications.
In fact we have gradually reduce it over the years in most greens effected with greater % bent grass within the contaminated areas than ever before.
Now you maybe wondering, like these two ,
Why we cored and sanded the 5th green this past week, and no I didn’t get bored and jump in, though I am chomping at the bit to get stuck into green renovations, as I love that type of work and know the huge benefits we achieve by doing so, the real reasons we did was –
As many of you would be aware, the only registered product for couch grass control in Bent grass greens was taken off the market a few years ago, we have basically been treading water since waiting for new products to arrive. Unfortunately this has been a slow process, we are hopeful the industry will indeed have some formulations by the end of the year, with this the case, I had enough product left to attend one green, and the 5th was it ! As an initial treatment with the hope we can back it up if a new product comes on the market later this year.
The product only works by root absorption, and does detrimentally affect germinating Bent Grass seed if sown to early after application. After a long summer with plenty of player traffic, green infiltration rates (movement of air, water and products into the soil profile) is slow at best with the risk of any applications running off the surface before moving into the soil profile or lingering a long time on the surface.
With this in mind I decided coring this green and ultimately renovating it earlier than the others would give us the best opportunity for success by allowing the product to be moved directly into the root zone immediately during application, it would also allow us to over sow the green during our normal renovation period so all greens would be recovering within the same time period rather than having the 5th green dragging behind.
The other reason which led me to the decision to renovate the 5th green earlier was the existence of 4 largish couch patches, too large for plugging, developing in the middle section of the green, of which I wanted to get on top of before it got out of hand.
These patches had multiple total knockdown herbicide applied with the objective to kill off surface couch and rhizomes in the soil profile, after taking effect, the plan was always to remove the contaminated turf and soil profile replacing it with clean fresh sand and turf from our nursery.
The green needed to be cored prior to laying turf in these sections; otherwise we would be lifting and damaging the newly laid turf.
The only other option would have been to wait till the green fully recovered after sanding in 4 to 5 weeks time and then turf the patches, further delaying this greens full recovery and playing differently to the other greens for a much longer period of time.
In taking this course of action, I understand, some players may not be happy about the green playing very different to the others for the week, I do apologise for any inconvenience caused however I appreciate your understanding given the reasons provided.
Should the process have a successful outcome, we plan to expand the process next March Renovation, something to look forward to ! 😁
I will leave it at that for now as I am getting too excited about renovations,
hope you are too !
Till Next Time
Happy Putting !
