Yesterday we applied some liquid fertiliser, seaweed, wetter and growth regulator to the greens. The fertiliser we use is 100% ammonium sulphate, which is a readily available source of nitrogen for the grass plants. This is essential at this time of the year as the soil temperatures are low and any form of nitrogen that is released to the grass plant dependant on temperatures rising or are slow to uptake into the plant will take time to work. We want an instant yet controlled growth pattern to ensure we get surfaces that are relatively fast with out the need to cut excessively low or having to roll every day to achieve the speeds we desire. Applying 3kg/N per hect every 3 - 4 weeks gives us this. The greens are not as dense as they normally would be at this time of the year due to the cold and windy weather we have had for the last month or so but when you look around the course every thing is about 3-4 weeks behind where it should be, flowers, trees and adjacent arable crops are barely out. I'm sure a spell of warm and damp weather will kick things in to action. The growth regulator was applied at a very low rate(100ml per hect), this will help uniform the differing growth rates of different species of grass as the soil temperature slowly rises.

We have been cutting the greens every two days due to the lack of growth, we hope to start cutting every day from Friday. The height of cut is still around 4mm, again we will lower this to the normal summer height of around 3mm when the turf starts to show signs that is in full growth.

Cutting the putting green before irrigation is applied