Friday 17th August

Course Update

Hi there,

I hope you have all enjoyed the last few weeks since my last blog. I have had a little break to Tenerife which was a  little warm but nice to relax. Whilst I was away, back here at Broadstone we have had a couple of inches of rain which has changed the look of the course. Fairways have began to green up and grow strongly but as you may have noticed the greens have also thickened up due to natural rain water having Nitrogen in it. We are currently working with verti-cut units and brushes to help speed the greens up.

We are currently hand mowing (4mm height of cut) as often as possible due to the saving of man hours from the recent dry spell. I try and use the hand mowers as often as possible due to them causing less compaction to the greens and the presentation factor is second to none.






Coping with this unusually hot summer.

You will all be aware that we all have had a very hard/hot summer and now you are hopefully seeing a return of a little green in your gardens. Having played a few courses recently and spoke to many course managers. some are finding out how easy it is to lose large areas on your greens, fairways or tees. Many clubs have suffered loss of grass coverage from the heat and will have to spend a lot of money on grass seed. 

A lot of the issues from the warm weather have been to fairways due to lack of water. With a lot of our competitors using excessive fertiliser applications and then needing high water applications, whilst this can create lush green fairways, the course grasses that appear through over feeding and watering do not survive very well in drought. At Broadstone, fortunately, we do not fertilise fairways, (we do use a seaweed product for health) as our aim is to have fine heathland grasses that literally look after themselves. (Bent/Fescue). I hope you have all seen how well our fairways have stood up to this spell of hot weather. To help us, we have had the 8000 litre bowser out most mornings doing up to 10 loads and this has been a great tool and I have to give credit to Keith for his excellent skills.  Below is a picture of Keith and his tractor

With the opens almost over it takes me now on to our maintenance week. Just a brief outline on what we will be doing throughout next week weather permitting.

Greens/Collars - 

Remove cores from all greens with 8.3 mm hollow tines. We remove cores to relieve compaction, help keep on top of thatch level, release air and it also allows locked up food in the soil profile to feed the plant. There are many great benefits but I don't want to bore you all

Remove cores and take them to Compost heap,

Top Dress green with a 70/30 fendress.

Overseed with Arrowtown Browntop Bent seed. We seed on to the dressing as it only needs to be sown in to the ground at no more than 5mm

Brush in with rubber drag matt

Tees - 

Remove cores from all tees with 8.3 mm hollow tines

Remove cores and take them to Compost heap,

Overseed with a fescue seed mix before dressing as the seed need to be sown deeper than bent.

Top dress with a 50/50 Fenn dress 

Brush in with rubber drag matt

Approaches will only be solid tined and top dressed with a 80/20 fenndress. We will seed the approaches where needed.

The 70/30 or 80/20 in the dressing means  80% sand and 20% Fenn soil . A lot of courses dress with sand but with our greens program we are on a 70/30 mix which creates ideal conditions for bent to thrive.

Any questions you ever have, feel free to ask me in person or go through Ed.

Thanks for reading.

P.S The football season is underway, Southampton for the champions League,