Heather, Heather everywhere

One of the great success stories at Stoneham for the year 2015 will not just be the new ditch at 17th (which is great and runs amazingly in the wet) or the new 9th path (again fantastic and huge investment by the Management Committee) but for me the natural success story of the heather regeneration. 

The combination of the woodland management project and allowing the long roughs to grow have made a huge impact on this. The heather that was once there before is starting to return. My memories of playing Stoneham when I was younger is of the heather and how amazing it looked. 

We have three different types of heather on site (that I have seen so far, not including garden heathers around the clubhouse). These are:-

Common Heather (Calluna vulgaris) 

This Heather or Ling as it sometimes known has smaller leaf than the others  and it can be a pink or white (the white flower is called lucky white) is normally in low nutrient areas but it can also be found in mature conifer woodlands, often along with Cross-leaved Heath and Bell Heather, particularly where selective felling has created small clearings or a patchwork of light and shade. Funny enough it is the most common heather... Who would have thought with the name!! 

Bell Heather (Erica cinerea)

Bell Heather is slightly larger with the flower looking a lot more bell like (see above). 

And Cross Leaved Heather (Erica tetralix)

This is slightly darker than bell and leafs are across from each other. It also has a fantastic smell and prefers wetter soil types like clay. It's very common in the New forset. 

Back to where I was (sorry if I got side tracked)... By not cutting it this year with the rough mower we have seen more and more reappearing. It obviously (like most people) didn't like being cut in half or allowed to grow! 

Another contributing factor was the use of the mulcher that cleared out the woodlands at the end of the woodland project.  This basically rotavated up the ground in and around the woodland giving air to the once dormant heather seed. See photo above, you can see the Heather coming back through the bare soil. 

Heather seed can lay dormant for around 75 years in the soil and still be brought back to life with different techniques. 

These will include stripping of areas by removing the turf with a turf cutter. Some times the area is then hollow tined to help or like I said above a simple rotavate in the correct area and lots of patients! 

In the coming months and years we will be trailing some of these techniques along with heather plugging using heather turfs (does what it says on the tin) 

Brashings (collecting seeds from other areas and laying on top of bare ground) to improve these areas and regenerate some of the old now lost areas. 

I must say having Charlie on the team with his wealth of experience (42 years) at Stoneham does help here as he can remember in detail where the heather used to be. Now I would say don't panic if heather isn't your thing as its not like the entire course will be covered but selected areas and remember it's a slow growing plant to establish and could take years.Plus, I am sure the standard of golfer you are, you wouldn't possibly miss a fairway ;-) 

So what have we been doing with the heather? 

Last winter before I arrived Graham Hastie (deputy) and the team collected heather brashings from the South Downs and placed these all over the bank at the 8th where the huge rhododendron bush once sat. Within 6 months we have started to see heather coming through. Pretty amazing as you can wait up to 5 years for some signs of regeneration. 

This area will still require work but this is a great story and one we continue with. 

Other works we have been doing have included strimming out some of the heather features. This basically removes the grass cover and highlights the heather improving both the golfing strategy and the aesthetic's. The heathers competition from the grasses lowers and the plant health improves.

This will also be carried out at the end of the season as a sort of pruning of the heather. This will also drop some of the seed from the flower back into those areas where we are trying to promote it. 

We have been using a demo of a Grillo machine. This machine has a dedicated heather system available on it. It cuts and collects long roughs above the heathland, by collecting the long grasses we not only improve the light to the heather plant but it collects the seeds from the grasses before it has chance to drop amongst the heather and smother it as it starts to grow. 

We can also use this machine to collect heather seeds once flowered and use these in other areas as we try to establish lost areas again (and by the way it's great for leaves in the winter too). 

Removal of saplings, gorse, weeds and any other unwanted species has been an ongoing project within the heathland areas. Some of this work has been undertaken by some of the members (guided by Neil), I would like to thank them for the help and dedication. Thank you all. 

One of the last things we have done is to spray the heather areas with a chemical to remove the coarser grass species including Purple Moor grass. These coarse grass species eventually choke out the heather if not removed and this is the best way to achieve our goal. 

Above you can see the invasion of the coarser grass species (dark green) by removing these, the Heather will flourish and get better and better. 

I will report more on this in future blogs. 

Lastly, one of my favourite looks out on the course is the Heather faced bunkers and banks. These are fantastic and will be something we will be looking at working on in the coming years! 

Okay enough from me again. Just wanted to highlight the fact that the heathland is popping up all over the course and what we are doing to improve it. 

Remember Please don't take your trolleys through the Heather as this could kill it and undo all of the hard work going into it. We will soon be marking areas with posts (thanks John) to warn you of areas we want trolleys kept well away from. 

Bringing our heathland back is not just an option but an obligation! 

Matt 

No pain no gain!

Hello and welcome back to our blog. 

I have finally presented my Greens Presentation Evening (Phew) along with Graham Hastie (our Deputy) so this will give me a chance to blog some more information about what's been going on within the Greenkeeping department. 

Course Maintenance week has been and gone. A lot of work was carried out to the greens for reasons I will explain. 

The Greenkeeping team worked tirelessly during a very hard, long week with most days being over 12 hours just to get the work completed. Well done guys, superb effort (if your reading this). 

Now before I start telling you all about the different works we carried out, let's me explain a few things first. 

Why are we doing all this work on the greens? 

Our greens may look good on the surface but there are some underlying issues. These are:- 

•High Organic matter (or Thatch as it's known to most) 

•Poor soil structure 

•Clay base 

If you look at the photo above you can see the thatch layer in the top inch of the soil sample. 

Thatch is a layer of grass stems, roots, 

clippings, and debris that settle on the 

ground and accumulate over time. 

This basically looks like shredded wheat and acts like a sponge. 

During the summer it doesn't allow moisture through to the root system causing them to be very shallow and run along the top inch or so, this is called bridging (as that what it does and looks like). The photo above was taken in August after two days of rain! (Not much moisture in that profile, the results are a poorer soil structure than we want). 

This also makes the greens suffer in the heat as they are not strong enough to cope with it. 

Above shows some of the damage caused during heat stress. (Note: You can see the irrigation was only hitting the corners due to a fault with the pump but the green showed signs of stress in one night. This is something we will eradicate now we have started out aeration program). 

During the winter months this thatch becomes soaking and acts like a sponge holding the moisture meaning the surfaces are wetter, softer than they should be. This can cause:-

•surface damage

•Increased diseases

•Water logging = Less golf being played 

How do we monitor the thatch levels ? 

Soil analysis and tests a carried twice a year. Other data is collected in house using many other methods including core samples or using an infiltration meter. Below is a copy of the STRI (sports turf research Institute) OM testing results from Stoneham GC in the top 20mm since 2008- 2014 

As you can see OM (thatch) levels have never hit the target zone yet but it shows some works have been carried in the past to reduce this. We will continue to improve these results. 

Okay, don't panic! It's not all doom and gloom and loads of golf clubs are tackling the same issues or have other issues. The thatch issue I have spoken about in this blog can be resolved with some good old fashioned greenkeeping, good diary planning and a bit of patience on certain days from the membership. 

Things will improve more and more each time and disturbance will be kept to a minimum. To show we mean this, the Management Commitee have backed the greens department and we recently have purchased a new Pro core which gives a great aeration finish. We have also purchased our own Sweep and fill brush which dresses the top dressing in very quickly, filling all the holes and lastly we purchased a Turf Iron or roller as some say. Not only does this help with speed and smoothness during tournaments but it's great for getting the surfaces back from aeration works quicker. 

The reason I have tried to explain about some of the issues we face is I felt it was important to inform you of where we are starting from and why we are making decisions or doing different works to areas on the course.  

Our main aim as a team is to reduce the Organic Matter and finally hit our target zone, doing this will give us great greens and help extend the golf season! 

So what are we been doing about it ? 

In one word... Aeration!

What is aeration I here you asking? 

"Regular aeration has become one of the major exercises on any busy golf course to keep healthy aerobic conditions. The level and frequency is dictated by the level of play and the make up of the growing medium"

A simple statement from one of the great greenkeepers Jack Mcmillan. Simply saying, air is the key to life, the more you compacted them, the more you aerate them and you will still have good greens! 

What aeration do we do to the  

Greens during the year?

•Almost weekly passes with Sarrel rollers (very small tine, just opens up the surface)

•Solid tinning at various depths (depending on the requirements and diary as to size and depth)

•Regular hollow Tining at various sizes (depending on thatch 

level)

•Deep scarification at least once a year (ripping out nothing but thatch) 

•Verti-cut the greens ‘little and often’.

•Slit tinning of greens in the winter months (a slit tine is a dagger shaped tine that aerates the soil but doesn't leave a hole, more of a slit funny enough!

This reduces the amount of water getting into the soil profile during periods of high rain as to much can make the greens unstable). 

Carrying out all these aeration types during the year will not only improve the drainage and reduce the thatch but it will improve the soil structure immensely.

Quick recap- thatch...check, aeration...check, the Whys...check. Now on to the how's... 

Okay I hope this is making sense to you all. A bit of a greenkeeping crash course. If not feel free to ask me when you see me and I will try to explain. 

So here's where I can start talking about course maintenance week...

We started course maintenance week off using the sand filler machine. This is basically a deep scarification machine that rips out thatch to about -20mm in the ground.

As you can see from the pictures above once the scarified line has removed the thatch it then fills with sand behind. This helps to dilute the remaining thatch and acts as a way for moisture to pass by the layer to improve the infiltration rate by linking it with other works. 

This machine works a lot like the Graden used last year but it is a lot quicker. All greens were completed in one day. With the Graden it took three day plus a lot more work was required to clean the surfaces. 

The sand filler collects the debris (ripped out thatch), this is then emptied (see above) ever time the other section is topped up with sand. 

It's also topped up with sand using a trailer rather than men with buckets! 

Once day one was completed we had added 30 tons of kiln dried sand (our selected top dressing put through a kiln) and the same amount of thatch nearly removed.

On day two we targeted two other layers in the soil profile. 

We can check the layers by using a soil penetrometer.  

This is a diagnostic tool to measure the extent and depth of subsurface compaction (It's design is to act like a plant root and highlight when the pressure is to great for penetration). This then highlights our layer and shows what depth we need to tine to. If you simply tine as deep as each machine went these areas would become compacted and cause layers. This is why we vary depths. 

We wanted to get air down deep to allow the roots to develop deeper to help with drought and  OM management at depth. This works by encouraging the bacteria and fungi to work harder to break down any layers deep down (it's to deep to hollow tine). Our target area was 8-9 inches. 

For this we used the verti- drain. This is aerates using an almost garden fork like action to aerate. (Tine widths can be changed and heave depending where you are and the required out come). 

This was immediately followed by the pro core with Hollow tines. We hollow cored to 3 inches (again removing the thatch from our target area and deeper). 

Below are cores. You can still see the high thatch layer in them. This is why remove it and exchange the soil for a better growing medium.

This then left millions of votes to be collected! Unfortunately due to my late arrival in the season I could not book a core collector or harvester for collecting these off the greens due to the whole of the UK also doing there maintenance to there greens that week too (I have since hired one for other areas). This is something we will plan into future dates from now on. 

So back to our week...with no hire machinery available we had to resort to the good old method of pushing them off and shovelling up. This is VERY labour intensive and generally hard work but the guys got it finished. 

The lifted cores were then taken to the right of the second where they will be used to build a turf nursery for greens turf. I will right a hole blog on this idea in the future! 

Then we added ALOT of sand top dressings. Another 50 tons to be precise!  This was painstakingly slow due to some of the traditional machinery but the results will be worth it. 

We then used our new sweep and fill brush to fill all the holes back up. This also helps smooth the surface and keeps waste to a minimum and more importantly gets the sand off the greens quicker than other methods.

We managed to complete both nines on Tuesday/ Wednesday. 

We then ran the Air2g2 machine across the greens. 

This machine blows compressed air down three rods fracturing the soil surface to around 10-12inches. This is a great machine that really proves drainage and just helps unlock the soil profile and enhances soil structure. If you can blow air to areas that never get air, things will start to come alive and preform better.  

This machine is becoming another great tool used everywhere from Real Madrid to ascot race track.

(Thank you Campey for the demo). 

Following all that work the greens were fertilised to aid recovery (this does give us a flush of growth (meaning green speeds change and green speeds drop as they grow during the day) especially with the levels of rain we experienced but it is necessary to get the greens back to there best ASAP.

We also over seeded them with brown top bent using our sisis over seeder. 

 

Other areas

We have also been carrying out work to:- 

Surrounds- we have started to hollow core surrounds from now on. We have also started to spray for weeds, implement a fertiliser program and with our new semi rough mower we will start to see these areas improve.  

Aprons have been hollow cored again and top dressed as we look to make these more like greens by extending the practices on greens out. Be aware we will be asking you not to take your trolleys over these very soon (just like you do with greens). 

Tees have been verti drained and hollow coring has now started. These will be heavily topdressed and over seeded again. These too have been sprayed for weeds. 

Our daily divotting has paid dividends this year during the playing season. Obviously the rate of recovery will slow during the winter. 

Why are course maintenance weeks in August? 

Another question I am asked a lot his why is course maintenance week in August just when the greens are good? 

The reason is recovery. August is traditionally the quietest months on the golf course with a lot of holidays being taken then. It's also has perfect soil temperatures to aid recovery. Greens are puttable within days and back to normal within a couple of weeks (weather dependant). If we carried this out later in the year and the weather changes we could be waiting months for recovery. Do it to early and the greens get to compacted going into the winter months. 

Conclusion

So following a successful course maintenance week were we managed to remove tons of thatch and got 80 tons of sand back in to the greens this will improve soil porosity and create a good soil exchange. I was very pleased. 

(I wasn't with the wet the week after but you can't have everything). 

This is something we will have to continue to do during the maintenance weeks until we hit our target. Then we will reasses our plan and do what we need to in order to maintain the target. 

The old saying no pain no gain is true but with each treatment the greens performance will improve not just for the agronomic side of things but for you the membership. 

Okay, that's enough from me today. I hope this made sense to you all. It was a good blog to show some of the talking points from the greens presentation. More to come in coming blogs I m sure!

 Happy golfing! 

Matt