Growth Potential

2nd Green this morning.

At Ealing we always trying to improve and like most industries, turf maintenance has evolved and is evolving all the time. On the agronomy side, getting the right fertility programme in place is crucial for having healthy, but playability greens. Nitrogen is the main element applied to playing surfaces, but this nutrient is so hard to judge. Over apply and you end up with slow, thatchy greens. Under apply and turf lose can occur. For many years agronomists have talked about the 'magic line'. This is when you are in complete control of your grass growth and eliminate peaks and troughs. But how do you achieve this when so many variables are around such as the weather and temperature?

This year we have decided to 'tweak' the fertility programme slightly at EGC. The aim has been to get as close to that magic line as possible without affecting the agronomy side of the greens (and of course how they putt). In general there are four things that a grass plant will need to allow it to grow. Fertility, water, temperature and light all play their part. We can control fertility pretty well now with soluble Nitrogen applied instead of granular fertiliser. Then if it grows too well, suppressants such as trinexapac-ethyl will calm it down. Water can be monitored with a modern valving head water system, along a weather station and moisture probe to allow you to gauge the soil conditions. Light is a tough one. Especially on a Parkland course, your hands can be tied to a certain extent (unless you are Augusta and have artificial light!). The last one leaves temperature and over the season this dictates a huge amount of the potential of the plant. This is where a newish method called 'Growth Potential' comes in!

An american agronomist called Micah Woods has been writing about this for a while. http://www.files.asianturfgrass.com/201306_growth_potential.pdf It basically relates temperature to the potential of growth. But we know all this we hear the cries! How do we monitor and control it? He has set a threshold for cool season grasses such as ours at around 20C and anything above or below affects growth. So for instance if the average for July was 20C, then the grass has the potential to grow at its maximum rate. But if the temperature drops by say 8 degrees this could drop the potential by over half.

What does this mean for Ealing? Well by using this method it could allow us to control growth to as close to that 'magic line' as possible. We already have a modern water system and have a weather station and moisture probe. So we are in control of our moisture needs. We control Nitrogen inputs with external nutrient tests. Light is out of our hands at present. So that just leaves temperature. For this we implemented the GP system and at the start of the year we set up a spreadsheet. Depending on temperatures, we applied a certain amount of Nitrogen depending on what that spreadsheet told us. Straight away we could see that over the years at certain times (namely the spring), we have over applied this nutrient. This method has been going now for 5 months and the results so far have been interesting:
 

	Period	2012	2013
Nitrogen	Jan to May	91kg	31kg
Potassium	Jan to May	78Kg	23kg
Smoothness	May	9.1 out of 10	9.5 out of 10
Speed	May	9.4	11.7
Rainfall	May	38.8mm	49.8mm

These figures were taken until the end of May in both of those years. Straight away you can see that we have used around a third of Nitrogen and Potassium in 2013 (only nutrients applied to the greens) and smoothness and speed has increased. The reason why we put rainfall in there is that many would believe that May of last year was wetter and that's why speed and smoothness was down. But looking at those figures you can see that actually it was wetter this year, but speed rose to 11.7 feet from 9.4!

So our conclusions so far are very positive. We have used less fertiliser (as we had the coldest spring for 50 years), but our performance was better. It will be interesting to see how this runs over the season and we will report back at the end of the year. For now the signs are looking as good as the greens!

These roots need pruning!!!

Trees on a golf course bring many qualities. Lovely canopies, gorgeous smells and will give a golf course character and strategy. One other thing that they bring however (and it's not a good thing) are their roots! Unfortunately tree roots and a golf course don't go hand in hand. They block drains, smash pipes and damage machinery. One interesting fact is the root system of a tree is 2.8 times the size of its canopy. So the next time you approach a green, have a look at the surrounding trees. You will be surprised how many roots are affecting that green.



At Ealing we are very proactive in root pruning as our identity is a parkland golf course. Part of our maintenance strategy is cutting back the roots away from playing areas and over the years many greens such as the 1st, 6th and 12th have had their roots pruned as their performance was suffering. This week we pruned roots to the back of the 5th green. Over the past few seasons we have noticed the back section of that green has been suffering and we feel one of the major reasons is the row of Oaks directly behind it. Armed with our new trencher, a channel was dug 1.2metres in to the earth 110mm wide. The roots in the trench were cut and then we physically cut them back further. The spoil was then backfilled, compacted and seeded on top.

The whole process took around a day to complete and disturbance minimal. The long term benefits however hopefully will be plain to see. A good quality green, running smooth and fast!

Boards laid out first

The trencher moves in

Cutting the roots back

Spoil plops to the side

Backfilled and a nice clean job in one day!

TP Tour comes to town!

The weather was kind

Last Wednesday we hosted the TP Tour's London Pairs competition. It was a fourball betterball competition and featured many tour pro's and star feature was ex-ryder Cup player Paul Broadhurst. 46 pairs played 18 holes and then the top 6 scores played an extra 4 holes giving a 22 hole total. The event was eventually won by Adam Gee and James Heath after a 2-hole sudden death play off, with Adam holing a 12 foot winning putt.




The course was in immaculate condition with the greens stimping at 13 feet on the day. The Greenstaff were on top form and every area of the course was set up to professional standards. The comments from the players of the day were great. Twitter was very active with great tweets such as 'best and fastest greens I have every putted on' and 'Ealing Golf Club = comfortably the best greens I have putted on in England' To view our twitter page please follow this link https://twitter.com/EalingGolfClub

Greens stimping at 13feet

Players preparing

It was a great team effort by the Greenstaff and many hours were put in to prepare the course for the event. It was nice to show off our course and we look forward to seeing them back next year!

Fairways getting a cut first thing

Our Course Manger & Pro were out there!

1st Major of the year - Spring Meeting

Getting those stripes burnt in

The Greenstaff have been busy this week preparing the course for our first major of the year, the Spring Meeting. It's been a great week and has allowed us to prepare the course in beautiful conditions. This time last year it was pouring down and we had to postpone the event at that time. What a difference a year makes!

A lot of effort goes in to building up to a big competition. Greens are moved on a little, bunkers given that extra spruce up and course definition is top of the list. Long hours are needed, but it is worthwhile when you see the course in the finished article. Over 100 members will be playing this weekend and with the forecast decent, the greens will be firm and fast. On Friday morning they were stimping at 13 feet, so make sure you get on the rightside of the pins with your second (or third) shots. The new 13th back tee will be in play and we wish all competitors good luck this weekend. You may need it!

Pins being marked out this morning

New 13th tee being given some water

Guys hard at it!

Ealing Greenkeepers visit The Grove

Every year we do a course visit and luckily this year it was The Grove in Watford's turn. The Grove is considered by many the best conditioned course in the UK and held a world championship event in 2006 (remember Tiger Woods and that 18th hole). We have done this for the past seven years and visited courses such as Sunningdale, Bearwood Lakes and The Buckinghamshire. The aim for these visits is to see how these illustrious clubs set up their maintenance operation and to hopefully take things that we consider relevant to us back to Ealing. The Grove didn't let us down!




It was a glorious day last Tuesday and The Grove was in excellent condition. Greens were firm and fast and fairways beautifully presented. Speaking to their Head Greenkeeper and Irrigation technician it soon hit us that things are not always greener on the other side. Yes they may have treble the number of staff than us at Ealing, but it is a high maintenance golf course. For instance for us to cut greens and tees, it takes two guys on a ride-on machine. For them it is seven, with four on the green and three on tees. The big thing that we took away was the need to plan ahead and attention for detail. With a busy course the Head Greenkeeper spends more time in the office planning operations than out on the golf course. It is a beast and needs to be managed right. The golfer is their number one priority, something that we agree on at Ealing!

Known for their fast greens!

Dave their Head Greenkeeper explaining operations

Tees as good as some clubs greens

Well defined 'crisp' edges

Great run offs at the backs of greens

Irrigation audit

As we approach the start of the season, hopefully this year our irrigation system will be used. In 2006 the club invested heavily in a state of the art irrigation system. In total (including the borehole that was added in 2010) it cost £310k to install a whole new system including water to greens, tees, approaches and fairways. It was a great investment by the club and during periods of hot, dry weather, it allows us to maintain these playing surfaces to the best of their abilities.

A lovely sight when allowed to be used!

 Now that the system is in to its 7th year, regular maintenance of it is needed to allow it to function to its maximum potential. This week the attention has turned to our spring audit of the system. All sprinkler heads (over 500 in total) have been edged and trimmed. On top of this, all arcs and pressure have been checked and any faults found either repaired or put on a maintenance schedule. Last October over 40 sprinkler heads were raised as since installation, they had dropped. This took over 20 man days. As you can begin to image, irrigation takes a huge amount of resources and maintenance to maintain. It is underground so out of sight and can be easily forgotten about. However, when you need to use it, it has to be fit for purpose. Let's hope we have the opportunity to use it this year!

Working at 5bar of pressure

Testing for arc and pressure

Over 500 heads to be trimmed every 4 weeks

In a good year around 20,000m3 will be used

And you thought it was wet this year!

For this weeks blog we thought that we would take you back in time. Below is a picture that was taken of our lovely neighbouring 12th Century church, St. Mary's. We believe it was taken around 1890 and as you can see, things weren't so dry in those days either! The view is taken from the left side of the 17th hole and looks directly across the fairway to the church. This fairway regularly floods during extreme wet weather but we don't think we have seen it this bad. Around 1980 the green was moved in its low position to the existing plateau green that we play to today. When the river does flood it reminds us of the 17th hole at Sawgrass. The only problem is instead of a 132 yard tee shot it turns in to a 355 yard hole with no fairway!

A priest apparently drowned in the river Brent. You can understand how!