My name is Matt Purcell, Head Green Keeper, Warrenpoint Golf Club.
What we've got here we've got Liam Deputy, he's on the, , Toro 3400, okay so set at four mm at
the moment, obviously greens are probably a little bit softer come Autumn, winter times,
we'll be raising to four and a half, maybe five maximum. It's cutting on the diagonals.
So coming into the autumn/winter months when your greens are all a little bit softer
obviously, we're cutting with a triple. A lot of people change to hand mowers that you can
see there. He's doing a cleanup lap, what we call a perimeter, so what I do, I do a clockwise perimeter
and then the next day, the next time I come to cut I'll do an anti-clockwise perimeter, and then I'll
leave a perimeter all together - so your units don't sink on the one side because if there is to sink
what you'll get is you'll get a lip here from where everything's compacted
so anti-clockwise, clockwise, rubs that perimeter line out so it's just like a basically nice
cleanup lap where you can see there, and then green looks beautiful. If I say so myself!
This is our aeration week, this is our red X people carrier aeration.
If you look at the back there, we've got 12 mil tines in the back.
Done a bit of work now, so they've done a lot of greens already and tees, collars and approaches
Just for the viewer, this is a solid tine, this is brand new, obviously. eight mil tine
and this is the difference, this is a hollow core tine. So obviously three times a year we check
out the organic matter which this pulls out. This is just a pencil tine that will
just punch holes to let air flow, and water flow through the system, letting air all through there.
Similar to other machines, other aerators, the Pro ??????? difference is the carrier on
the back we can take off, and put on the back of a tractor and add different attachments to this.
Had that this year. I've been here, uh, just turned one year at Warrenpoint so the lowest tine I
go to, is a five to six mil pencil tine, and so basically I can run over, uh, and the golfer, it
wouldn't even affect a roll on a ball. I do that every five to six weeks all the way through the year.
"And after you do it during the season would you roll?" Yes, every five to six weeks I'd get five five to six mil pencil tines,
and we just go over all the greens, and just a light roll just to make sure that there's no,
you know, aeration holes. Three times a year we change to normally a 10 mil core so that's basically
when that fits in that there is pulling the cores out if you can see there - so that's organic matter -
which, we do that three times a year, March, try and get one July if possible depending
on Gol, f and uh, and autumn which I have just done one just previous to these Videos.
Here we are on the 15th Fairway, where aeration, what we do on the greens, tees, collars and
approaches, we do on fairways as well. People normally get a vertidrain on the back and spike,
like an old star splitter Andrew's got on the back of his tractor. If you look again, this is
all about opening up that profile, letting air flow, an oxygen front run through the all the profile
so the rain water doesn't sit on your fairways, so it's always creating aeration through, through
the fairways. A bit of an old school that the new generation have probably never seen - but it's
just a case of lowering it down off the PTO, and it's just creating what we call here like a slit,
and you know, one day and all fairways are done.
We're standing on our 15th, and we're basically in Northern Ireland
we've got this beautiful view here, the backdrop, across the road and across Narrow Water, which is
across the border with the South - so they're still in euros, and we're in the pounds,
which is a little bit weird to get used to but as an Englishman well I'm okay where
as you can see that's Southern Ireland, island of Ireland, and we're in the North.
Just tidying the collars up. Obviously when you cut a green, or roll a green you want to
keep keep everything in like uniform, so like you know, you cut your green, you roll
your green, you want to do your collars and your semi rough so the whole area
looks nice, uh, we're just cutting collars and approaches at 12 mil now we're in the autumn,
and it'll just give that a blow so if you look at the, come and have a look at that there.
Well, what I do ask them to do, he's gone anti-clockwise to lift the lateral growth
that he tends to lie over sometimes, and then he'll whiz back around the opposite way to
get a real nice formatty cut, and get it really close. You come and have a look at these collars.
Collars look really good now. They've had a feed, when we fed greens
and uh that, really pleased on how how the Course is looking coming winter into autumn. Should be on
main greens, what everybody wants all year really, no temporary greens, so place is looking good.