The winter is a difficult time for any business but it is especially difficult for any sports related business that utilises natural grass on which participants play.
Golf is a popular all year round pastime with all clubs becoming under increased pressure to maintain its greens to a high playable standard with many members showing little understanding of the challenges a greenkeeper and his staff face on a day to day basis, in order to achieve what are at times undeliverable targets.
Waterlogged green are a common problem, especially on older golf courses that were often constructed without any form of drainage systems to take water from saturated the soil structure.
Sitwell Park's parkland golf course was built ninety five years ago on a sloping site with solid clay just six to twelve inches below the surface and its legacy is waterlogging and standing water a real problem, especially on four greens on the lower part of the course.
The South Yorkshire club called in Terrain Aeration in March 2008 after head greenkeeper Chris Colton suggested that the club tried our one metre deep compressed air injection.
The four greens that are the lowest point of the course, and most effected after torrential rain, were treated first by forcing air into the compacted clay at a depth of one metre and under varying pressures ranging between 200 and 400 pounds per square inch using the Airforce Scamper.
Drilled seaweed was injected on the final blast - this swells and contracts with the weather conditions keeping the fractures open.
The results were dramatic with the notorious fifth hole coming back into play for the first in four months.
Following treatment the fifth hole was brought into play for the first time in four months with play resuming within seven days of the treatment.
Sitwell Park's secretary Steve Bell said: “The other treated greens that we’d been on and off all winter were open all the time. The surface water had gone and the turf had lost its sponginess.” Steve continued: “The subsequent condition of the treated greens has been outstanding"
To keep your greens open through the winter and members off your back, why not give us a call and discuss deep aeration using compressed air injection.
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