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: