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Showing posts from 2020

Winter/course improvement program

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Since the country locked down and all golf courses in England was ordered to close again!, the interim golf council along with myself, the business manager and the professional staff wanted to make the most of the time to undertake a few course improvements. These are a few projects undertaken this side of Christmas with more projects to come in the new year (weather permitting) A very difficult time for the ground staff to start with due to leaves still needing clearing on a near daily basis, grass still growing due to temperatures reaching highs of 18 degrees in November and rain events making all of those tasks almost impossible without making tyre marks and spreading mud from worm casts!. The course being closed to all apart from walkers getting their daily exercise (I know silly!) has enabled us to get a couple of jobs done and a major one started, this wouldn’t have been able to in the same time frame. Firstly we had the artisan scheme extended to make use of some extra hands to

Trial plots

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It’s been a while since my last post and that’s testament to the lack of spare time I get these days, but I am keen on keeping this line of communication between myself and the membership. Phoenix members will have noticed my trial plots at the rear of 16th, 17th and 18th. If your wondering why these weaker looking squares with disease patches and a lack of colour are on the greens, then I’m going to tell you, but first a background into the products we use to help with disease in autumn and winter. (Grab a coffee some caffeine may help with this one 🥱) We are sat on 90-95% Poa Annua grass and this is prone to diseases like anthracnose and fusarium patch. As we move into autumn and winter, fusarium is the biggest threat to our greens and most clubs, including Phoenix, spend a lot of money on keeping the greens as disease free as humanly possible. These products include a balanced nutritional feed for the turf, nutrients that make an environment unfavourable for fungal pathogen develop

Aeration and infiltration

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Tomorrow, Monday the 22nd of June will be our summer aeration window on the putting greens at Phoenix golf club. We have done no major aeration since our hollow core just before lock-down and its well over due. We had certain restrictions placed on us from the R&A and England golf, some of which I didn't agree with but nether the less best not to upset anyone, especially as I'm avid twitter poster, too many eyes watching 👀.  Since reopening of the golf course the traffic has been immense, lots of play from members, visitors and squeezing extra large field competitions in has its detrimental effect on the compaction of the greens and ultimately infiltration of water. (below is the results of the last test, you can spot our suspect greens!!). Infiltration is measured in mm/hour and is the rate at which soil can allow water to move into and through the soil profile, this allows the soil to store the water for plants and soil biology but also release excess water. Sandy soils

Poa flower in putting surfaces

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Here at Phoenix we have been managing Poa annua on our golf greens ever since they changed to being a high percentage of Poa probably 50 or 60 years ago. The old management techniques have certainly given us some problems underneath in our soils and consequently on top on our surfaces. High kg of Nitrogen per annum, too much water, height of cut too low and lots of disturbance to keep on top of organic matter has started the circle of decline and has given Poa annua the advantage it seeks over other more preferred perennial species like Bents. There are several sub species of Poa annua, old established push-up greens like here at Phoenix are 95% Poa, but I would have a guess that 90% of that is Poa annua var reptans which is the preferred species. This so called annual actually grows as an annual, a biennial and a short lived perennial. The pure annual species is more prone to death from disease and drought so is definitely not what we want in the green. All grasses flower and

Just when the weather improves!

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It’s been a while since my last post with the dreadful weather since the 3rd week in September, enough said about that the better. A couple of topics to cover briefly on this blog post with topics covering the improving weather and the course conditions, greens maintenance and of course the topic on everyone’s mind, the dreaded Covid19. Firstly after the poor autumn and winter, a dry forecast is what we wanted and looks like that’s what we are getting. Spring is in the air and the course should dry steadily as a consequence. Instead of counting mm of rainfall I can look at my other graph regarding Evapotranspiration (ETs). ETs is the sum of evaporation  and plant transpiration  from the Earth's land to the atmosphere. Through winter low numbers mean little chance to dry especially you have no drainage and water falling from the heavens. This last week and the coming week have seen these numbers climb due to lengthening days and this strange orange thing appearing in the sky!.