Welcome to Clandeboye Golf Club.
I'm the Golf Course Manager, I've been here 30 years actually this year.
We have a 36-hole parkland course. One would be predominantly heath land come parkland under Ava
and the Dufferin is our main Championship Course which would be predominantly uh parkland.
We have around about 1250 members at Clandeboye and uh this year we've taken 170 new members.
We would be averaging around 350 to 400 rounds per day at the moment which is uh
very very good but again- very sore on the Golf Course.
So we are going to take a look at our main autumn maintenance and try,
and I'll try to explain as much as we can.
It's a new grading system that we're using
grading Verti draining grading and overseeding.
so I'm putting on lots of sand to firm the greens up.
So this is what we're going to try to show the viewers today.
What we're doing today we're doing a Verti draining at eight inch depth and two inch centers
then we're carrying out a scarification which is called grading so it's a linear lines procedure to
remove the thatch. Afterwards the thatch is cleared up we over seed with a Fescue and Bent mix then we the
top dress with straight sand we roll that in and then wait for uh germination of the seed
and hopefully our greens will be back in good condition and maybe three weeks time.
The reason why I started this grading - everybody used to hollow tine, and then the grading was more
American uh thing that came actually well American, Australia, the graders from Australia
so we felt that you'll get 80 percent more thatch removed using a grading system
rather than something like only 40 percent through hollow tineing so the reason why i went down this line
STRI I sent away to STRI they told me my problem was 18 mil below the surface
so instead of we thought then we'll target 20 mil using the grading system to get into that
thatch so we really pull the thatch out of that to 20 mil that allowed the water to
channel quicker through the surface and make my greens a lot firmer I always found my greens
were becoming very soft to walk on even when I was doing a hollow tine twice and three times a year
but once I started the grading - different. My greens now are firm, the water comes through the greens
far quicker and uh members are happy and I'm very happy. You can see the debris you can just
see what the the thatch content is in the greens now it's not all thatch but it it's it's a mixture
of surface uh turf sward and thatch so it's a mixture. We do first a procedure of Verti
draining you can see the small holes at about two inch centers they allow the water to penetrate
further down through the soil profile these linear lines are three mil tine to to
18 mil to 20 mil in depth we clean the profile of the soil profile up and then we seed into
them and then we hope to get a good germination rate when we seed into these lines. It's a
very aggressive procedure our greens were absolutely amazing our membership were complementing us
on the greens and if they could just see them now but in three weeks time these greens will be
repaired and back to normal and we need to do this and i've found that this year with very
little maintenance uh on the greens due to the Covid at t the start that my greens were puffed up
uh we were down the only cotton greens three times a week and uh we felt that we needed to do this
so i'm actually a little bit more aggressive this year we're down 20 mil we're putting on more sand
and we just want to try to get the greens more compact on the top surface.
At the moment what we're doing now at the moment we're introducing seed to the greens
and we're using a Fescue and Bent we're using around about three three bags for 18 greens.
The product is MM11 we're using some mixtures of Fescue and Bent and what we're trying to achieve
is introducing more Bent into our greens and Fescue there's no doubt that carries would
germinate a lot quicker than the Bent we're using a Fescue and Bent and allow for the Fescue to
carry the Bent because the the the Bent is the very small seedlings where the Fescue is larger
Our make up on greens uh are we're predominantly at Clandeboye Golf Club an 80 20. I Iwould say we
would have 80, 80 percent Bent and some Fescues very little Fescues on this course more in the
Ava course which is drier so would be predominantly 80 20. Poa Annua would be or
20 maybe even creeping to 30 percent but we're trying our best to keep it down which is difficult
we we would use a lot of growth regulators through the season
we would spray our greens every 12 to 14 days with primo max a growth regulator using organic
liquids as well with that and that we would use seaweed mix as well straight seaweed at the moment
and then we'd use a separate seaweed in iron for presentation spray. We're trying to introduce more
seaweed meal into our greens. This time we don't do that, we do that at the beginning of the year
on our spring maintenance we introduce uh two bags of uh straight seaweed meal this is more
for soil conditioner and trying to just uh be the only thing that is on the market for
con condition conditioning soil at this stage it would be nice to have other products on the market
for conditioning but as I say seaweed is something that we're we're working closely with a company
down south and we can see the benefits of it the greens are uh we've got it we apply this
we would only apply the seaweed once a year by a granular form but liquid form then we would
apply that every 14 days around about maybe 12 liters per uh hectare on our greens um
seaweed is a a a product that it's very difficult to see what it does
but it's really the only product out there that enhances the soil it does strengthen the plant
but again it's something that we just add in as another additive
So he'll just be kind of doing like a rotation like this and and what he'll
be doing is staying on the green yep so he'll stay on the green on a figure eight
so because we've got grass seed on here as well and we don't want the grass seed matted on to here because
it's too expensive so he'll just keep on going and then once we get this in as much as we can without
doing too much because sand is very abrasive so we don't want to do too much pushing because that
bruises the turf and knocks it back so we just need to do the right amount and then leave it and
then we'll roll we'll put our speed ruler on and roll it and then we'll hit it with water so that's
the procedure of getting it in but when we can see this a roughly up to nearly three ton of sand on
our greens for 12 to 13 weeks weren't played on and we felt then that we were getting the
the surface was puffed up a little bit and and that's why i'm doing a deeper thatch
uh reduction taking more thatch out putting on more sand and we're just trying to get the greens
firmer for going into winter and we've got a European Tour event here next August and uh those
professionals want firm fast greens so they could be they don't want pudding greens they don't want
soft greens they want a green that will actually uh when the perfect shots hit onto the green it'll
accept the ball and it'll and a bad shot down will be disregarded and come right through the green.
Well this is our bigger shed now that holds all our cutting equipment.
You can probably see that we have a multi-coloured shed with John Deere with Jacobson with Toro.
I would buy a Haiter, an old Haiter sitting in there. i would have to be a green keeper
that would probably buy the best from each distributor I wouldn't solely go in red I
wouldn't slowly go in green or wouldn't slowly go in orange. This is the new hybrid Eclipse
she's battery operated we've got uh electric motors on her
so she's a half hybrid so there's an engine in it which drives a small generator which sends
electric to the cutting heads so you would get a consistent cut all the time. We would normally cut
three mil we wouldn't we wouldn't really come much lower than three mil we'd maybe go to
maybe sometimes for a major competition if we felt that growth was uh but rampant we would then
bring her down to about 2.85 but that'll be only for a short time with I think we
feel that we can at 3 mil now with the speed rolling on our top dressing regime on our growth
regulators we can get a true consistency of putt in around 10 all the time with not going too
low because I feel when you go too low it's detrimental damage to the grass plant. But we have
a Toro rough mower we just purchased this year.
This piece of kit here is a hydraulic serving unit for cutting the rough we cut
the rough at about 50 mil this particular machine was over 60 thousand pounds
so all equipment is very expensive now and the upkeep of the equipment is very expensive
Mechanics on site we have our own in-house mechanic we
try to do everything in-house to keep the cost down. At the moment uh we have we would be roughly
running on uh maybe thirty thousand pounds just to maintain the machinery which is quite high. I'd
like to pull that back down.
Absolutely invest in more modern equipment and maybe put that on to hire purchase then we would
have maybe two years warranty and some machines are giving you a three year warranty with them
so that's the only way to try to pull your daily maintenance your yearly maintenance down.