Spring Renovations at EGC - Part 2: Fairway Hollow Coring!

The second part of the spring operations was hollow coring the fairways. It was an intense operation and the greenkeeping team were on 12hour days to allow us to achieve our aim. The reason for this was to physically remove high organic content (thatch) from our fairways.


With minimal work done to the fairways in 120 years, as you can image thatch will build up and in big numbers! For the last 3 years we have been adding drainage to our fairways and now halfway through the plan. This consists of installing pipe in the ground and then connecting the system with secondary drainage. The next stage is to improve the top soil and reduce the carpet which sits on top. The program consisted of the following:

• Hollow cored at 50mm spacings with a 12mm tine going 75mm deep
• All cores then collected with our Wessex scarifier set at ground level (to reduce scalping)
• In the afternoons the team would drag mat the debris and blow any remaining to the side
• Once finished any damaged areas would be repaired and GUR added

The fairways are 10 hectares in total and by our estimations we removed 40million cores. The next stage will be to scarify three times per year and finish with a verti-drain in the autumn. We have taken some organic matter cores and have had them tested. It will be interesting to see how these numbers fair over the next few years!

Below is a slideshow of the operation:

Spring Renovations at EGC - Part 1: Greens,Approaches and Collars!

This week the greenstaff have been busy punching holes and applying sand. It's been quite a week. Over 80tonnes of sand was applied to the greens, approaches, collars and all the fairways were hollow cored. We believe it's the first time that the fairways have been hollow cored and it took a lot of effort!

When you have two major projects going on at the same time it requires a lot of organisation and commitment from all parties. From the clubs side we have hole closures, disruption and only allow members to play. On the agronomy side the greenkeeping team work long hard hours and of course there is an expense to everything. We hope its worth it!

As it was two projects we have split this weeks blog in to two parts. Part 1 is below about the greens operation. Part 2 will follow in another blog and contain the fairway operation. We hope you enjoy the read!

Greens, Approaches and Collars 

Two Operations in One!

Our usual spring renovations took place on these areas. They were deep verti-drained at a 200mm depth on a 40mm spacing with a 12mm tine. 80tonnes of sand was applied first and after they had been spiked, the remainder of the week was about brushing the sand in to the holes. It finished with a few vibro-rolls to smooth the surfaces and 'shake' the sand in further. Conditions were ideal and below is a slideshow of the operation complete with captions.