And so it starts again

Now we near august we are gearing up for our annual greens maintenance program. To get all equipment prepared and correctly set up we first do the practice green. This is the size of around three greens and is also a good area to experiment and try new things if we so wish. 

The ends of this green are soil based however the middle is of root zone construction. So we hollow tined the whole green also we verti drained the soil based areas to relive compaction. 

Cores were then collected and the whole green sanded.

We then seeded and brushed to get the seed into the holes before rolling.

Next week we will be starting on 1-9, let's hope the weather is ok. 

We have one of the members, Dave sawdon helping us for a month whilst we are a little short staffed. After a morning of collecting cores he knows that being a greenkeeper isn't just sitting on a mower :)

Whilst I was moving holes I was checking soil profiles and thought it would be interesting to show what we face regarding drainage. On Tuesday we had a good amount of rain first thing, as many are aware some greens drain better than others. This isn't down to the top soil profile but what's deeper. Often greens that are built up are made from inferior soil that inevitably drains poorly. 

Below are 4 soil samples from 4 greens, 2 drain fantastically and 2 very poorly. Can you tell which are which?

Once the rain stopped we were open again without too much issue. The course however is now growing a lot more.

By the way the poor draining ones were 2 and 3, firstly the soil is much more heavy, indicated by it sticking to the blade as the profile is removed and the black layer that is evident shows lack of oxygen within the soil causing little rooting, which can be seen from the bottom of the good samples.