Our Autumn Maintenance week work has now been completed and all of the major operations planned have gone well. Excellent weather conditions have ensured the dedicated efforts of the green staff have been rewarded with a good result. This post will outline the tasks undertaken during this important week in the greenkeeping calendar.
Micro solid tining of greens and collars.
Each of these small holes measure only 9mm across but go down 70mm into the soil. The channels created are critical in helping to improve the movement of air and water into and through the rootzone. Even once healed over on the surface the channels will continue to provide superior moisture and gas exchanges while also providing space for new root growth.
Inter-seeding greens and collars
Seeding is carried out to increase the proportion of appropriate grasses in the sward. The graminicide application we carried out a few weeks ago has been successful in selectively removing unwanted ryegrass in the greens and inter-seeding ensures the spaces left behind are filled with high quality fescue grass seed. Our seeding unit uses discs to cut a channel through the turf before dropping the grass seed into the channel. The discs on our machine are spaced at 35mm intervals which allows a large amount of seed to be inserted into the turf at just the right depth to ensure a high germination rate. On this occasion we chose carry out a double pass on each green. A total of 160kg of seed has been used this week which will have a positive impact on the performance of the turf in 2015.
Sand dressing.
To restore levels following some fairly invasive operations sand was spread across the surface of each area before being worked into the base of the sward. On this occasion we used a little over 20 tonnes of material. Top dressing turf has many benefits not least improving surface smoothness and firmness. We will aim to apply more material in 7-10 days to improve smoothness further.
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