Course Update 25/08/17

Course Update 25/08/17

With the rain easing the course is starting to dry and the surfaces are starting to benefit from the wet weather. I feel the course held up very well through this period and all the regular aeration and top-dressing has helped the surfaces drain and stay playable. I also played last Saturday in Adey Harris' pre wedding do and it was really nice playing with and meeting a few of you outside my working hours.

You may have seen us out on the greens this week, with the big tractor and verti-drain machine, punching rather large holes (19mm) in the greens. As you all know, I wouldn't do this unless it is a benefit to our greens. As I have mentioned before, air is a massive part of plant growth and with the verti-drain putting the 19mm wide holes, 9 inches deep into the greens, the bent grasses will have a chance to get their roots into the gaps created in the ground. We will not be top dressing the greens until Tuesday as we only wish to apply a light dressing, which would have been lost completely down the tine holes had we started any earlier. By Tuesday the holes will have mostly closed up and the dressing will just smooth the surfaces up.

You may be wondering why we haven't hollow cored all our greens and covered them in 100's of tonnes of sand like many other courses. We did hollow core some of the wetter shaded greens about 3 weeks ago due to higher organic content, but all the aeration, dressing, seeweed and low fertiliser applications help keep our organic numbers down which means we do not need to core, as it would be detrimental to our greens sward conversion.

Over the next month, we are going to re-start over seeding the greens with browntop bent grass seed, using 2 different cultivars of bent seed. You can see in the picture below that the two we have gone for, Arrowtown and Manor, are both at the top of the seed data performance charts.

Golfers will notice relatively minimal disruption during this verti-seeding operation with just small lines being visible, something golfers may remember from Autumn 2015 when a similar process was carried out.

Can I just ask that with this recent wet spell that is causing softer than usual ground conditions that you all keep an eye on your pitch marks and keep replacing your divots.

I would also like to wish Adey and Roberta all the best for their big day in Italy from all the greenstaff.

Many Thanks

Paul

Course update 04/08/2017

Course update 04/08/2017

Hello all,

I just wanted to start by saying how lovely it is to hear all the positive comments coming in from lots of you. I know there is still lots and lots to do out there but I feel we are heading back up the ladder.

I have to start with the weather.

On July 11th, I was moaning to Ed saying I need some rain. His reply was 'you shouldn't of said that!'

From the 12th July to 1st August we have had 133mm (5 1/3inches) of rain. The course has held up very well and all the top dressing, aeration and other practices we do are paying off.

I know the greens are a little slower than usual and every time I think they may dry and speed up we get another downpour. I hear some of you say 'get the roller out!' but this would be one of the worst things we could do when they are as soft as they are. It would be highly damaging to the turf from digging into the green as the roller has a lot of downwards pressure and therefore stressing the turf and then bringing on any unwanted turf diseases such as anthracnose.

I am trying to hand cut the greens as often as possible which I feel gives the green a great finish. The job takes 3 experienced operators 4 hrs (total 12) each whereas cutting with a ride on mower takes 1 man 5 hours, so you can see why sometimes we cannot do this. You will probably see that a lot of clubs hand cut tees and not greens but I feel that I would rather put more man hours into the greens.

You may have seen me over the last week out on a new machine, looks a little like a road sweeper!! I can assure you it is not, it is our new rotary cut & collect rough mower fitted with a heather kit. The heather kit allows us to cut at a higher height. This machine is used on nearly all heathland courses around the UK plus many more others. The machine will cut and collect the debris from 0 inches to 9 inches and from using it this week I feel this is going to transform our areas away from the main playing surfaces.

Ed and I have decided that this year we will top all the heather and gorse, just to tidy all areas up but not to lose the heather flower. We will then spend the next couple of months putting together a long term plan as to how we can better manage the heather areas all over the course, to try and remove the gorse and any unwanted weed in our heather. It will be a long process but we have to start somewhere.

In the picture below, we have cut the left side at 6 inches and the right side has not been touched so you can just see how at this height, we just tidy things up without yet going into it too deeply, that will come later. As you play at the weekend you will notice many areas we have cut over the course and will notice a difference in the appearance. Like I have said above, this is a tidy up job before we write a full heather regeneration project for Broadstone Golf club

Coming away from Broadstone, I played Ferndown last Wednesday in a Greenkeeper event and enjoyed the course. They have spent much time last winter refurbinshing bunkers, something I am very keen to progress with at Broadstone in time. Their new bunkers were settling in but I have to say we have a wonderful course at Broadstone and was happy to be back here! I enjoy playing other courses and always learn things both positive and negative, however, it also helps me appreciate what a special venue Broadstone is and furthers my desire to keep on improving it.

Many thanks for reading 

Paul

P.s Keep on top of your divots and pitch marks 👍

Course update

Course Update 23/06/17

What a week it’s been!!!

With temperatures hitting early 30’s this week it’s been a challenge. I have spoken to a few course managers around the area and they are all praying for a little rain.

With the very high temperatures this week I feel the course has held up very well. I have made a change in our fertiliser/wetting agent program over the last few months and feel we are benefiting from this, especially on the fairways where we have no irrigation. I say a change in our fertility program, meaning this is the first time since I have worked at Broadstone that we have applied a wetting agent to the fairways.

Wetting agent helps to 
• Reduce water runoff on sloped areas
• Enhance penetration and distribution of water, Nutrients and chemicals into the soil.
• Improve nitrogen efficiency
• Reduces the need of water to the plant by 25%

Wetting agent is applied throughout the golf course in conjunction with our fertiliser program.
These management practices are also seeing benefits on the greens, where whilst we are all sorry for any inconvenience caused by putting in aeration holes during the year, we are starting to benefit with the water, fertiliser and roots being able to get through the soil profile.

On the subject of greens, we are pleased with the health and ball roll on the greens, although we will continue to tweak feeding, watering and cutting practices to improve the consistency and speed. This has included some afternoon cuts, (although not this week due to the heat in the middle part of the day) and we will also start introducing the roller back to the greens for occasional use. Now that the health of the greens has improved, this useful tool for getting a little more pace and improving smoothness will hopefully keep the greens going in the right direction and also that little tweak up for the bigger events.

We will continue to look at all areas and improving the golfing experience. Next week, this will include dealing a bit of uneven growth on a few collars which is in hand with brushing, top dressing and extra fertiliser to bring the differential growth back together. The whole course has had a selective weed killer applied to it which will knock a lot of the unwanted weeds back. The greens are the only area that has not been treated as any weed is handpicked by the green staff.
I am trying to play in the scratch roll up on a Tuesday night most weeks and either on these evenings or at other times, please feel free to come and say hello as it would be nice to meet a few of you and listen to any comments or just speak about my plans for the course.

I will be putting the flag in old 9th for you to see our spare green at the weekend. This green as stated before, is where we are heading with our greens. It has a small percentage of poa in but is predominantly Brown top bent, which gives the ball a lovely roll

Course update

Golf Course Update 16/07/17

Another beautiful week for golf with a day of rain thrown in to help the greenkeepers. 23 mm of rain in 24 hours has helped no end.
It was a busy weekend with the Club Championships, but it went well for us with excellent weather, if a little too warm, helping greatly. Starting at 5am both days we double cut and rolled the greens, changed holes and raked the bunkers. We hope you enjoyed the course during the event.
Having only been in the position for 4 months now and I am generally very happy with where the golf course is, although getting impatient with all the bits I would like to do with more manpower and budget, welcome to the world of a greenkeeper! I thought I would give you a little insight today into my cutting regimes over the course and heights of cut at present.
Greens -  4mm

• Double cut in morning (2 directions) with a possible cut in the afternoon, depending on golf,      weather and if needed

Approaches - 9 mm

• Cut 4 times a week

Tees - 9 mm

• Cut 4 times a week

Fairways - 13 mm

• Cut twice a week depending on weather conditions. Mainly dryness.

Semi Rough - 1.75”

• Cut once a week

Rough - 5”

• Cut when needed, we look at areas of high use and keep them cut and allow other areas to grow naturally.

All of my experienced staff are able to do all of the jobs, although we tend to keep certain staff on certain areas. This then helps give a more detailed view as for example, each day the person who is cutting greens during that period can report to me any changes he sees over the week. This could be disease, dry spot, firmness, lateral growth, smoothness, weak areas, pitch marks etc. If I change the staff each day this may be missed.
The bunkers are raked 7 days of the week. I know we all have a desire to see these hazards improved and I understand this but it is neither an easy or quick job. I have 2 members of staff working on them daily from stone picking to depths.
I am currently getting as many of the team together for an hour each afternoon to go to a bunker and give it a full stone pick and move sand around. As you can see in the pictures we are having are having great success. I know they may appear again due to the bases in them but until this is rectified I will do my hardest to get as many out as possible.

Whilst the bunkers will not see amazing improvements until they are fully refurbished, this increased stone picking effort and some other plans we have for the coming weeks should hopefully see some short-term improvements.
You may have seen the 3rd lake is a little low, we are well aware of it. It’s a bigger problem than first thought but we have a plan in action for next week.
Just as a heads up for early next week, we will be carrying out a small amount of aeration work to the greens, to help further promote the bent conversion. This also helps the consistency of the sward and ball roll and dilutes any unwanted thatch we have in our soil profile. This will not be massive holes and lorry loads of sand but either a micro core or pencil tine and a light/medium dressing, depending on weather and soil conditions on Monday/Tuesday. We will do our best to keep disruption to a minimum. 

Meet the team.

Shaun Whittle has worked here over 10 years now and is the one that you may well have noticed has lost almost 7 stone over the last year. He has lost his hair in the process but I think that’s coincidence!
He enjoys golf, football and is an avid DJ around the clubs in Bournemouth.
I hope this report has given you a little insight in to some of or work and till next time, enjoy the weather and golf!!
Thank Paul

Short video of aeration & top dressing on the 7th green

Aeration Works

This is a little video showing the Greens staff at Broadstone doing some aeration work followed by a top-dress of the green.

The green is spiked with a 8.3 mm, then cut at 4mm, then top-dressed with a 80/20 sand fen soil mix followed by someone matting the dressing in and finally cut with a greens mower.

This process for each green takes about 30 minutes.