Plant Growth Regulator (PGR)

The greens on the course currently have quite a slow ball-rolling-speed even though we double-cut and double-rolled them with a turf-iron last week. The sward is noticeably quite thick and I immediately thought that we may be behind on the verti-cutting schedule. This however is not the case.

The head greenkeeper advised that there has been excessive growth because he didn't include a PGR in the last fertiliser application as this is what his literature suggests.

From this one can see that literature can be used as a guide only and not a sure schedule.  The weather is always changing and a greenkeeper needs to adapt his practices to suit this.

Heather maintenance

The head greenkeeper aims to maintain  all the heather around the course in its building phase and in order to do this he trimmed all the areas planted with heather using a totary mower set at approximately ten inches high.

There are four growth stages in the life cycle of heather plants.  These are: pioneer phase, building phase, mature phase and the degenerate phase. 

Dollar spot spot & fusarium on the tee boxes

In the pictures one can see severe damage caused by the fungal infection as it has not been treated with a fungicide.

Bunker maintenance

When maintaining bunkers it helps to create a step around the edges to prevent sand spilling out when golfers rake their footprints.

Infection on a tee box

Fertilizing fairways

Yesterday we fertilised the fairways with a soluble granular fertiliser and added the plant growth regulator (PGR) Primo Maxx which is the preferred product of the head greenkeeper.

Brown Spot on the tees