Top dressing greens

With perfect weather conditions on Thursday, we had no choice but to top dress the putting surfaces. This task has been delayed for some time due to the poor weather, and has also proved how important it is to apply top dressing. The clear benefits of top dressing are ;

- lowers disease severity
- controls thatch in the soil profile
- improves water and nutrient usage
- reduces compaction
- creates a smoother playing surface

Using a tractor attachment spreader we applied around 13 tonne of clean sand (0.25-0.5) to all 19 greens.

To work the top dressing into the canopy we firstly used a drag mat followed by a double brush using a tri plex. The next morning we set the groomers at 3mm followed by a double cut, and ran the irrigation heads behind to finish off the job.

Course up date

Well the course is finally starting to dry out, with the putting surfaces firming up nicely! We managed to get some work done on the putting green, we slit the green followed by a heavy top dress, finally adding a seaweed soil conditioner.

We've recently been brushing the greens before cut using a 'drag mat'. along with standing up the coarser grasses, removing the dew prior mowing improves the quality of cut.

We've also noticed new shoots on the tamarisks we cut down in the winter. We're looking forward to see them flourish!

Sammy was busy pumping the sitting water out of the new bunkers on the fourth, these are now in play. Pops and Tom also had to turf across the 3rd green following a hydraulic leak.

Other jobs included, top dressing newly turfed areas, hand watered greens, flymo and strimming bunkers, mowing greens, tees, surrounds and fairways.