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Barenbrug
Bar Duo Bent
Superior greens mixture for lower nitrogen requirements, closer mowing and consequently faster greens!
Bar Duo Bent is a new mixture for using on golf greens. The mixture is the perfect combination of two bent grass species: Barking browntop bent (Agrostis capillaris) and Bengal creeping bent (Agrostis stolonifera). Barking demonstrates an excellent winter colour and a high wear tolerance while Bengal excellently performs during early spring. In addition to that the variety quickly recovers after damage and proved to have a high drought tolerance.
Combining the complementary characteristics of both varieties offer consistent year-round colour and performance for greens under regular very close mowing regimes down to 3.0 mm.
Graphs 1 and 2 show the superior performance of BAR Duo Bent in comparison with other mixtures, blends and monocultures under both the standard (A1) and relaxed (A2) input regimes. Under standard regimes, Bar Duo Bents closest and most consistent performer is Bar All Bent. Interestingly, under relaxed regimes, the now well-established Bar Duo Bent is out-performing all other bent grasses in the trial, including velvet bent, which is often (erroneously) attributed as being a lower input bent grass species. Furthermore, under both regimes, Bar Duo Bent clearly outperforms the monocultures of creeping bent!
Purpose
- New seeding and overseeding of golf greens
- Improving winter performance in creeping bent (Agrostis stolonifera) dominant greens
- Enhancing the summer performance and competitiveness of very close mown browntop bent (Agrostis capillaris) dominant greens
- Species exchange for improving year-round playing performance, disease tolerance and appearance of very close mown bent/Poa swards
John Deere
Irrigation at The Oaks
A brand new John Deere irrigation system is being installed on 27 holes at The Oaks pay-and-play golf courses at Oaks Park in Carshalton, Surrey, by Irrigation Services (UK) Ltd of Norwich.
The full system, supplied by dealer Golf & Turf of Wokingham in Berkshire, will cover all the greens, tees and approaches. It includes all the pipework and fittings, a total of 147 sprinkler heads, decoders and a John Deere eAurora controller, which will be linked to the internet and controlled by iPhone. This is the company’s newest controller, which is now able to manage up to 250 decoder stations.
The club has identified that as water is becoming a more expensive resource, its efficient management and economic use is becoming increasingly important in order to control costs.
An evapotranspiration (ET) meter will be used to make automatic adjustments to the irrigation system according to prevailing weather conditions and rainfall, to prevent the build-up of thatch and other diseases or stresses related to over- or under-watering. The eAurora controller provides programming to the second rather than the minute, which can lead to savings of large amounts of water over a season. Timing to the second also saves on electricity usage, as well as long-term wear on the sprinkler heads and pumps.
“Because we are using mains water for irrigation, accurate water management is crucial,” says The Oaks head greenkeeper Phil Benn. “The John Deere system is just a lot more advanced than anything else out there. You can operate and programme the entire system from anywhere using an iPhone, and it will text you if anything needs attention. If the new watering system works as well as it promises to, we can take the course to yet another level of quality.”
Ransomes Jacobsen
New technology removes any issues of hydraulic fluid spills on golf greens
Ransomes Jacobsen, the UK-based turf equipment manufacturer and an EIGCA Silver sponsor, has introduced a radical new ride-on greens mower, the Jacobsen Eclipse 322. This new machine is a significant departure from traditional hydraulic powered triplex machines that have been cutting greens for the past 40 years.
Designed to reduce operating costs and increase productivity, the Eclipse 322 provides cutting consistency on all types of greens, irrespective of the operator.
The hybrid technology in the Eclipse 322 combines a Kubota 13.3 hp 2-cylinder liquid cooled diesel engine with a 48-volt 5.8 kW continuous generator, which provides electric current to power the 2.2 kW AC traction drive motor and the three 0.97 kW DC reel drives.
Innovation has always been at forefront of Ransomes Jacobsen’s new product development and using electric motor technology totally negates the use of hydraulic oil. And that means NO leak points, NO broken hoses, NO hydraulic fluid trails across greens and NO hydraulic maintenance costs.
With advanced electronics including Frequency of Clip (FOC) control, the course superintendent can tailor the FOC using a number of variables. The result is that each machine in a fleet can be set to exactly the same FOC, providing identical finishes on all greens, irrespective of operator or machine. The result is a consistency of finish, better playing surfaces and healthier turf.
The sophisticated electronics of the Eclipse 322 give the course superintendent ultimate control over mowing operations on golf greens. Mowing speeds can be controlled to a maximum of 9 km/h and transport speeds up to 14.5 km/h. Similarly, the FOC can be adjusted: from 1.27 to 6.35mm for the 11-blade cylinder and 2.03 to 9.91mm for the 7-blade option.
Turf-Seed Europe
Winter Hardiness… and much more
A very interesting report has been published by Bioforsk on “Winter hardiness and management of velvet bents on putting greens in northern environments” (second experimental year 2008). The report is divided into four main chapters, the first giving results from evaluation of winter hardiness of velvet bentgrass under controlled conditions, the following chapters focusing on maintenance key aspects.
Three experiments comparing freezing tolerance of the velvet bentgrass cultivars ‘Avalon’, ‘Greenwich’, ‘Legendary’, ‘Villa’, ‘Venus’ and ‘Vesper’ with that of creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera L.) ‘Penn A-4’ (control) showed no significant difference between cultivars. For all cultivars, turf hardened at +2 °C for two weeks did not survive temperatures below -6 ºC, while turf that had been hardened for two additional weeks at -2 ºC mostly survived at –9 ºC and partly at -12 ºC. Only turf that had been hardened under natural outdoor conditions from August to January survived at -15 °C. In two experiments exposing the same cultivars to various combinations of simulated snow cover, ice cover and winter diseases, creeping bentgrass ‘Penn A-4’ showed better winter survival than the velvet bentgrass cultivars, which were not significantly different.
T2G creeping bentgrasses are confirmed by several studies to adapt to the most severe treats, from summer stresses to winter freezing, from drought to water log conditions, or salt tolerance.