From tee to green

The Downs Course

This month the weather patterns have been extremely interesting with temperatures into the 20’s but also a sudden drop to give us our first frosts of the autumn. Then back into the middle teens at the very end of the month. The greens have recovered well after September's maintenance, and now we slowly move more towards plant health side of things as at the moment we have a high disease risk. We have already sprayed a preventative fungicide to help with the Microdochium fungus, or Fusarium patch which is at the moment is being held at bay. With the drought conditions in the summer causing so much stress on the plant it is enviable that at some point we will get signs of the disease. We have had a small attack already but this was checked by the preventive fungicide, and the scars have grown in already with our foliar feeding program. To help prevent the disease we will also increase our aeration by sorrel rolling once a week and continue to pencil tine on a monthly basis. A deep aeration with the Air 2 G 2 will be done in November to help with de-compaction and increase oxygen levels deep into the soil profile.

We have kept up with our liquid and foliar feeds to aid in plant health. These are applied on a fortnightly programme to drip feed the plant so it always has nutrients for uptake.

The long natural rough has been cut and collected on most areas of the course. The grass cuttings are collected as we want to reduce the nutrients going into the ground, therefore reducing the courser grasses so these areas become wispier. An application of Laser is applied to these areas to reduce the ryegrass content in the sward, again making the areas wispier.

Currently, most of our time is used up by collecting or blowing leaves. Unfortunately, on windy days they fall faster than we can collect them. During our morning set up most areas are blown, however, sometimes we go back to the areas in the afternoon and it looks we have not even blown that area at all. We have billions of leaves we have to deal with in the autumn from our thousands of trees on and around the outskirts of the course, so thank you for your patience.

Looking forward to November, we will be continuing our aeration work using pencil tines, sorrel rollers and the Air 2G2 deep aeration machine. Also, we will be verti-draining the 13th green. A granular fertiliser will be applied at a half rate to thicken up the sward going into the winter months, also we will continue with our foliar feed programme. 

As the wet weather is now upon us, please ensure all pitch marks are repaired. As the greens are becoming slightly softer in the winter months, we notice an increase in un-repaired pitch marks on the greens. These cause the greens to become bumpier and also disease can increase around the pitch mark itself.

Look forward to seeing you on the course!

Rob Dyer, Head Greenkeeper, The Downs Course 

The Park Course 

Greens

Aeration work this time of year is key, especially with the damp mornings and of course disease is always threatening. We are sorrel rolling the greens twice a week to improve aeration by putting 1” spikes into the surface to help with airflow in the top layer, We are also pencil tinning greens twice a month with the aim to aerate a little deeper 4/5” to help dry out the greens and to help aid drainage.

We continue with our spraying programme that consisted of foliar feeding and soil feeding. The foliar will concentrate more on working on a thick healthy sward and to strengthening the plant from disease and other stress elements while keeping a consistent growth rate. The soil feed is more organic based with natural products such as seaweed to help with root strength and to build a more sustainable soil for which the bent with thrive.

For our granular feeding program, we use a slow-release fertilizer called sustane, this is an organic granular product that has a long-lasting soil and plant nutrition strengthens the plant tolerance against disease and keeps the green in good colour.

Academy Tee Matt Stands

Some much-needed investment on some new tee matt stands was in order at The Academy. We purchased a standard metal stand and give it a Goodwood touch. Nice timber edging was fixed to the stand and stained to give it a natural look.

Autumn is here so please be patient and understand we literally have billions of leaves to pick up.

We are fortunate not to have any disease scars on the greens, so the only damage scars that are viable are poorly repaired pitch marks or in a lot of cases these are not repaired at all so please repair all of your pitch marks!

Enjoy your game!

See you on the course,

Simon Berry Head Greenkeeper, The Park Course