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Maintaining a golf course alone

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Maintaining a golf course alone: Meet the head greenkeeper who took on lockdown single-handedly and was overcome by the community at his club.

Ian Pemberton always joked his course at Cleveland Golf Club would be brilliant if golfers weren’t on it. Then they were gone – for nearly two months.

He was alone, his entire staff furloughed, with a sweeping 18-hole links to manage as coronavirus shut the country as well as the club.

‘Pembo’, as everyone at the club knows him, is part of the furniture. He’s been in the trade for nearly four decades and head greenkeeper at the Redcar course for just over 13 years.

You could say he’s seen a lot. But he’s never experienced anything like the pandemic that gripped the town.

“It was horrible,” he said. “It was a testing time. It was a character building time and it was a learning curve.”

When a pipe burst, he had to be on it. Whether it was tees, fairways or greens, he was the only one on a mower.

Pemberton’s never regarded greenkeeping as anything other than a vocation – “it’s not a 9 to 5 job” – but he knew the only way to get through what essential maintenance actually meant was with detailed planning.

Well, that and an April drought.

“I put together an Excel sheet and programmed timings for when something desperately needed cutting. The greens were every three days and the fairways didn’t take much because it was that dry.

“(Without that) I don’t think I would have coped. I would have had to get the lads back in.”

When he needed it most, in those moments when everything threatened to get overwhelming, there was assistance from volunteers who gave him more of a fillip than they could have known.

“They were tremendous. They need a huge ovation from the rest of the membership. They were limited in what they could do, because they couldn’t jump on machines.

“They were divoting and getting to areas I couldn’t. There were always offers of help and that’s what I needed at that time.”

And even though he’s coming through a torrid experience, as we all have in our own ways, Pemberton has found positives among the hardship.

He’s always had a love-in with the members – anyone who’s ever had a round at the course is bewitched by his infectious enthusiasm and easy way of going about his work.

But even he admitted to getting a little emotional when golfers returned to the course and showered him with praise for its condition.

“It was wonderful. I’d be in the shed and three or four members came in with crates of lager. One brought me some Corona. How good is that? There’s a little bit of Corona for you.

“I love it here. The course is my back garden. It’s just that my back garden got bigger overnight for six or seven weeks.”

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La Grande Mare gets relief with Foley

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La Grande Mare gets relief with Foley: For La Grande Mare course manager, Rick Hamilton, relief grinding is what it’s all about when it comes to reel maintenance, so when he had his pick of grinders, he opted for the Foley Company Accu-Pro 633 with Accu-Touch 3 Control (ATC).

Rick first used a Foley grinder 30-years ago while working in Asia, and over the three decades that followed has used several manufacturers while a consultant. However, he has remained impressed by the principles Foley has stuck to and how they have developed their machines to make them user friendly and deliver consistent results.

La Grande Mare gets relief with Foley

La Grande Mare gets relief with Foley

“The main reason I stayed with Foley was to do with the principles of relief grinding. They have such excellent relief grinders, and although other manufacturers have good machines, but they don’t relief grind at the same level, and for me, that’s what it is all about,” he explained. Foley has always kept to the principles of that, and it’s something I believe is essential in maintaining a good quality reel and delivering and retaining the sharpest cut ; you have to relief grind.

“Because it’s an important part of maintaining the reel I wanted to make sure we could always grind when we needed to, and that’s what made the ATC so important. We don’t have a full-time mechanic, and I want all my guys to get involved. I’m a fully qualified engineer and greenkeeper, so I’ve done a lot of the maintenance work since I’ve joined here and I’m teaching the team. Having machines like this that are automated means once they’ve all been trained up, everything is programmed in and is easy for them to step in and grind.

“You get the same finish and quality every time because the machine is programmed to do that. The inputs are all the same, and the results will be the same, and we want consistency.”

The ATC system provides a step by step tutorial for new technicians, while more experienced operators can use the system straight away to tell the machine what they’re working on and it’ll do the rest. Automatic placement features, the Accu-Reel Selector and Cylinder Height Stop, automatically locate the reel for a fast and easy spin and relief grind in one set-up and work with the pre-set relief angles to provide hands-free relief grinding.

To get Rick and his team set up on the machine, Ian Robson from Foley Company’s UK distributor, ProSportUK Ltd, went to Guernsey to install the grinder and provide training for Rick’s team. Following the session, the entire team could use the grinder, with the results showing on the course.

La Grande Mare gets relief with Foley

La Grande Mare gets relief with Foley

“Ian from ProSportUK was amazing, the guy really knows his stuff, and the training was excellent,” Rick said. “My staff picked it up really quickly, and they were extremely impressed with the result, and they actually enjoyed grinding and doing the job, which is particularly important. Some guys who aren’t so mechanically inclined tend to shy away, and one of my guys who isn’t so mechanically minded found it very straight forward and easy to operate.

Now, they understand the machine, and they can see the result on the greens when they go out and see the mower cutting. Even to that point, when they came back in with the mower and re-checked the cut and reset all the settings, they couldn’t believe how good it was and how long the quality of the cut lasted.”

To experience the difference of the Accu-Pro 633 or other Foley Company models, contact ProSportUK Ltd at prosportukltd@gmail.com. 

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Bionema secures Innovate UK grant

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Bionema secures Innovate UK grant: Bionema Ltd, a leading UK-based biotechnology company, has received a grant from Innovate UK to support the company’s continual development of its bioinsecticide microencapsulation formulation, which delivers an effective alternative to chemical pesticides.

This additional £98,000 Continuity Grant complements a initial £1.0 million in funding support from Innovate UK, the national funding agency that investing in science and research in the UK, and from the Welsh Government’s SMART Cymru.

Bionema secures Innovate UK grant

Bionema secures Innovate UK grant

Dr Minshad Ansari, a world-leading biopesticide expert who leads Bionema’s research team, says: “The funding is helping the company to continue the development of its microencapsulation formulation and delivery systems, which is crucial to the development of effective biopesticide products.

“Effective control of pests, such as western flower thrips, aphids, whitefly and spider mites, require a robust formulation for targeted delivery. Currently, these pests are controlled by conventional chemical insecticides but some of them have now developed product resistance, while other products have been removed from the market, due to their harmful impact on the environment and human health. Biopesticide formulation and its targeted delivery is a more stable and sustainable approach for controlling these pests that are causing billions of dollars of crop damage on a world-wide scale.”

The outcome of this Continuity Grant-funded project will be a unique manufacturing process of proven microencapsulation formulation technology for next-generation bioinsecticide control. The new microencapsulated products will be registered and distributed across Europe, the United States and Canada. Currently, trials are in place with several multi-national chemical companies and distributors to commercialise the technology.

“We’ve been working for almost five years on biopesticide formulation development,” Dr Ansari says. “We’ve encapsulated a number of fungal spores in a capsule form that can be delivered to plant surfaces for targeting soft body insects. We just need to adapt that to work for this project.

“The encapsulated formulations also control release mechanisms, which can last longer and retain moisture on the leaf surface for targeting small insects such as spider mites. The overall goal is to demonstrate the robustness and stability of this formulation to see positive results in different environments.”

The project team includes formulation experts from the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham and at Bionema. In addition to Bionema’s research, development and commercial teams, Silsoe Spray Application Unit is also testing the product’s large-scale applicability and Applied Insect Science, regulatory service is involved for the registration of this product.

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John Deere sells SABO to Mutares

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John Deere sells SABO to Mutares: John Deere has announced that it has signed an agreement to sell SABO Maschinenfabrik to Mutares SE & Co. The transaction is contingent on regulatory approval by the Federal Cartel Office Bundeskartellamt, Germany’s national competition regulator.

SABO manufactures lawnmowers and other outdoor power products and markets them to homeowners, municipalities, and gardening and landscaping companies. The Gummersbach, Germany-based company was founded in 1932 and has been a subsidiary of Deere & Company since 1991. SABO has approximately 125 employees.

John Deere sells SABO to Mutares

John Deere sells SABO to Mutares

Mutares, based in Munich, is a private equity firm that currently owns 13 companies in the automotive and mobility, engineering and technology, and goods and services industries.

SABO will maintain ownership of its brand assets and its operations in Gummersbach. The company will continue to produce walk-behind lawnmowers and handheld outdoor power products, marketing those machines through its existing network of more than 1100 specialised dealers in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Switzerland.

Employees, customers, suppliers, dealers and distributors should notice little change in daily operations, according to Deere and Mutares.

“SABO is a leading brand for high quality walk-behind mowers and handheld power products in Europe, and the company is well positioned for growth with its line of battery-powered machines,” said Tim Merrett, John Deere’s Vice President, Turf and Compact Utility Platform.

“However, Deere is shifting its focus to key production systems that will allow our machine technology to be a differentiator. Further investment in walk-behind lawnmowers was no longer a strategic fit for our global business.

“Deere is not exiting the turf care business. John Deere will continue to produce a wide range of lawn and grounds care equipment for residential, commercial and golf course maintenance use,” said Merrett.

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Fleet of ISEKI’s for Blundells

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Fleet of ISEKI’s for Blundells: ISEKI UK & Ireland, distributors of ISEKI compact tractors and mowers alongside their local dealer MST based in Tiverton, recently sold a fleet of ISEKI machinery into Blundell’s School in Devon.

Amongst all the other tasks you need to get to grips with when starting a new job, Graham Cox at Blundell’s School in Tiverton was also tasked with upgrading the groundcare fleet of machinery, with the aim of it being more economical and cost efficient.  So, following on from what his Estate Bursar Ian Barnes, Deputy Head Groundsperson Richard Hutchings and the grounds team had started, Graham began looking into what was on the market.  Having contacted a number of local dealers ISEKI and MST came up trumps!

Fleet of ISEKI's for Blundells

Fleet of ISEKI’s for Blundells

Graham explains further; “we knew our two previous 36hp tractors needed an increase in power to 50hp in order to run the specialist sports turf equipment around the site. The schools overall strategy is to significantly improve its sports pitches and gardens and it fully supports the development of the team and the equipment necessary to do that.  MST brought out the ISEKI TG6495 IQ on demo for us to try, it was perfect for the jobs we require.  The dual-clutch transmission offers excellent control for when we are aerating, allowing accurate work to be carried out easily no matter who operates the machine.  The drive function is great when towing implements around the site or on the roads allowing us to travel quickly from one job to the next.

“The TG6495 IQ tractor’s are extremely comfortable, especially with the air con cab, which when you are maintaining 110 acres of grassland by verti-draining or mowing this is vital for my staff to avoid fatigue.  In the peak of the season the tractor and operator will be out over 20 hours a week just mowing so the renowned reliability of the ISEKI built tractor along with the ease of use was imperative.  They certainly have a great reputation and I can easily see why.

“We had loader brackets fitted to both TG6495 IQ tractor’s with one loader supplied so the machines are as flexible as possible in their uses here at Blundell’s. The gardeners use the tractor’s with loader for moving bulk material around the site, whilst we use them for grounds maintenance with implements attached.

“As part of the package we also required new ride on mowers for the gardens and fine turf areas.  After trying a variety of manufacturers we found the ISEKI SXG323 to be the quietest, most productive and comfortable.  The 48” deck was a better size and more manoeuvrable than the previous mower we had, allowing a very clean finish even in the smallest of areas.  With a number of large gardens and fine lawns on site the SXG323 collector mower is used extensively to take Blundells to a new level in presentation.  The large 550litre capacity collector with high tip allows us to get around a large number of areas before emptying.  Plus the SXG323 does truly cut and collect leaving a excellent and clean finish every time even in wet conditions which is great for my team to be as productive as possible with less downtime due to the weather.

“The deal also included a TXGS24 23hp tractor which is used on the astroturf pitches and running the SISIS Quadraplay on sports pitches.  It has a surprisingly high lift capacity for its size at 540kg plus it can take a front loader,  back hoe and centre mounted mowing deck if required but we didn’t need this for us.  It is lightweight and manoeuvrable ensuring we can maintain the pitches to the highest standard whilst creating minimal damage to the turf with the tractor.

“Scott Struthers at MST was responsive and very easy to deal with, we had a large range of demos and competitor quotes but MST made the decision simple; quality products at a financially viable cost plus the excellent service and back up provided, they offered the full package.

We have been very lucky, the school has supported the grounds department to enable us to produce top quality playing surfaces and grounds maintenance across the site with the best equipment.  The purchase will pay off for years to come with continued improvement of presentation at the school plus the renowned quality and longevity of the ISEKI equipment.”

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