The Duke’s Green Keeping

Hi all,

With October now behind us we are looking towards our winter preparation. Our daily tasks have change slightly as we raise the cutting heights and mow less, due to the slower growth of the grass. We are also beginning to prepare our winter greens and ensure the regular greens have the correct nutrients in them to withstand the harshness of the winter months.

GREENS:

We have hollow-tined the greens with micro-tines, over-seeded with bent grass seed and top dressed to fill in what we have taken out with the tines. We use smaller tines in the winter because it will allow for quicker recovery with the grass growth slowing down. The sand in the greens will still be warm enough to encourage germination from the seed.

We also applied some slow release 12 nitrogen – 0 phosphorous- 44 potasium(12-0-44) fertilizer. In winter high rates of potassium will keep the grass plant strong and healthy and the low amount of nitrogen released will help the greens grow a little in any mild spells that may occur. This should also help the seeds we have just sown onto the greens.

Slow release fertilizer (12-0-44)

We also apply a fungicide and an iron feed just to prevent any attacks of disease that may occur at this time of the year.  

TEES AND APPROACHES:

We are planning to hollow-tine some of our tees and approaches over the next few weeks. Again, this is a yearly maintenance that relieves compaction and gives us a chance to continue improving the surface and grass coverage.

The tees will also need fertilizing, we plan to use some 4-0-4 with a high content of iron. Iron, again, keeps the grass plant strong and knocks back any moss on the surface. 

WINTER GREENS:

Every year we mark out our winter greens, hollow-tine them, seed and top dress them. We do this to provide an excellent surface to putt on when the regular greens are covered in frost.  Playing on regular greens through out periods of frost can damage the grass. Playing on winter greens will ensure that the regular greens will be in top notch condition when the spring comes round again.

Other activities on the golf course -

We have started to flail mow and strim the long rough around the golf course- this is to help thin out the rough and should promote the growth of whispy grass next year. When the next frosty day comes along, we will concentrate on tree and gorse work….luckily there haven’t been many frosty days just yet!

Remember to check out Ayden’s golf lessons on YouTube. This week he shows us how a small thing such as the position of your hands on the club can make a big difference to your swing. I think this is a really useful lesson as I find it’s so easy to slip into bad habits.

Finally, a huge thank you to our seasonal team of green keepers who have now finished for the year. As always, they have been a great help and I wish them good luck for the future!

That’s all for now, look forward to catching up next time.

Derek