PRO 34R magnificent at Meadow Lane

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PRO 34R magnificent at Meadow Lane: Since using the Dennis PRO 34R rotary mower, the pitch at Notts County FC’s Meadow Lane has never been so clean according to head groundsman Matthew Hallam.

Matthew has been the head groundsman at Notts County FC for just over 18 months. In this relatively short time, he has seen a change of ownership and there is now a new sense of hope instilled at the club.

PRO 34R magnificent at Meadow Lane

PRO 34R magnificent at Meadow Lane

This impressive young groundsman has already made a difference in his short tenure and says that the new owners are certainly on-board with his future plans.

“The new owners have been in charge for 7 months now,” says Matthew. “It’s a slow build and they want to take this club as far as they can. We have been fully backed by them and they have really listened to us.”

Matthew has two members of staff working alongside him and admits that it can be challenging at times and that resources are often stretched, and it is for these reasons that the owners agreed to the purchase of two new Dennis PRO 34R rotary mowers.

“We first had a demonstration and I was instantly impressed with the speed of them and the amount of ground they covered due to the size of them. Prior to the purchase of these machines it was taking four rotary mowers and four people to clean up after a match.

“Purchasing these machines would mean that we would be able to get the pitch cleaned with just two people in a quicker time – it made complete sense and fortunately the owners agreed to it.”

The Dennis PRO 34R is a 34” (860mm) rotary mower which has been designed to help groundsmen achieve an aesthetically pleasing appearance and desired playing surface. It is ideal for sports pitches and lawns producing the enviable ‘Dennis Stripes’ while a powerful vacuum flow collects debris quickly and efficiently.

The angle of the cutting deck and twin blades can be easily adjusted using a single ‘click adjuster’ ensuring the mower is suitable for changing conditions and meeting groundsmen’s requirements.

“The PRO 34R’s are so good at getting all the debris off the surface – the vacuum is absolutely brilliant,” he continues. “We’ve found that after a game we have never seen the pitch as clean compared to how it used to look with the old rotary mowers we were using.

“You also get great presentation and we often use them on a matchday as well. If we have had a training session on a Friday, then we will use the PRO 34R to stripe the pitch on a Saturday morning before a game. We also take them across to the nearby training ground and they can easily fit onto the back of a trailer.

“We did look at other rotary mowers but with Dennis we knew exactly what we would get. We’ve used the machines before, they are reliable, you get great service and if you need parts you can call Dennis and get them straight away.”

For further information or a no obligation demonstration, please contact Dennis 01332 824 777 or visit www.dennisuk.com

For more news, reviews and insightful views, you can follow Dennis on Twitter @DennisMowers and like the company’s Facebook page – www.facebook.com/DennisMowersUK. You can also view the latest Dennis videos by visiting www.youtube.com/DennisMowers

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Well-Being Wednesday

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Well-Being Wednesday: Activity and exercise

Activity and exercise are essential in maintaining good mental health. Being active not only gives you a sense of achievement, but it boosts the chemicals in your brain that help put you in a good mood. Exercising can help eliminate low mood, anxiety, stress and feeling tired and lazy. It is also linked to living a longer life.

Well-Being Wednesday

Well-Being Wednesday

You don’t need to run a marathon or play 90 minutes of football; a short walk or some another gentle activity might do the trick.

Take a look at our Exercise and sport section, or go to our Events calendar, for ideas and information on what is going on in your area.

Do something you enjoy

Try to make time for doing the fun things you enjoy. If you like going for a walk, painting or a specific TV show, try to set aside time to enjoy yourself. If we don’t spend any time doing things we enjoy, we can become irritable and unhappy.

Whether you need help to get out and about or not take a look at our Things To Do section, or go to our Events calendar, for ideas and information on what is going on in your area.

Connect with others and be sociable

Make an effort to maintain good relationships and talk to people whenever you get the chance. Having friends is important not just for your self-esteem, but also for providing support when you’re not feeling too great. Research has found that talking to others for just ten minutes can improve memory and test scores!

Whether or not you find going out and meeting people difficult you can have a look at our Social Activities pages or our Events calendar for inspiration.

Do things for others

Helping others isn’t just good for the people you’re helping; it’s good for you too. Helping someone can help with your self-esteem and make you feel good about your place in the world. Feeling as though you’re part of a community is a really important part of your mental health. You could try volunteering for a local charity, or just being neighbourly.

Ask for help

One of the most important ways to keep yourself mentally healthy is to recognise when you’re not feeling good, and to know when to ask for help. There’s no shame in asking someone for support if you’re feeling low or stressed. Everyone goes through patches where they don’t feel as good as they should. You can try speaking to your friends or family, or if you think your mental health is getting on top of you then you can speak to your GP.

Other information and advice

Please see the Other information and Advice page for organisations and services that support people with experience of mental health issues.

Thanks to The Sleep Foundation for providing the tips on how to sleep well, and to overcome problems with sleeping.

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The growing role of PGR’s

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The growing role of PGR’s: Plant Growth Regulators (PGR’s) are a longstanding programme component for those maintaining all types of amenity grassland and managed amenity turf.

Clipless NT® from Headland Amenity’s is a Trinexapac-ethyl PGR, which is typically applied from mid-April on outfield or course turf and mid-late May on fine turf. Alex Hawkes, Headland’s Sports Turf Manager explores how PGR’s work and how many are now finding additional benefits of their use.

The growing role of PGR’s

The growing role of PGR’s

PGR’s effectively block the production of gibberellic acid – the plant hormone responsible for cell elongation. By lowering levels of the hormone within the plant leaf, PGR’s reduce cell elongation and vertical growth and, instead, redirect the energy within the plant to generate enhanced root development and lateral growth. In its simplest capacity, it can contribute towards a sward that requires less frequent mowing, saving manpower and associated machinery costs. They can be particularly useful for reducing mowing in difficult or dangerous areas such as steep banks.

Because growth is redirected from vertical to horizontal, PGR’s are often employed by greenkeepers and groundsmen alike to increase the density of a given area. Moreover, they have also been shown to optimise the conditions for seeding operations – particularly those in or near competitive swards. With the regulated growth and lower energy consumption of the existing plant, nutrition from the soil profile is optimised for germination and establishment of the new seedling.

At Trent College in Nottingham, Head of Gardens and Grounds Peter Flewitt trialled Clipless NT® in this capacity, on the schools four cricket squares. “In our environment, we are able to renovate the squares much earlier in the growing season than perhaps other local clubs or the county grounds would. We applied Clipless NT® at the end of July, a week before we started our renovations and we nicknamed this area our ‘old grass’. We were interested to see if by regulating the growth here, the new seed sown in the vicinity would germinate better due to lower competition – and it worked well.”

Peter continues, “We left the ‘new grass’ to grow through and the difference in their comparative growth speeds was evident – particularly when we mowed for the first time that it was just this new grass being cut. With the Clipless NT®, used in conjunction with H-Cote™ (slow-release fertiliser) we were able to then manage and sustain the healthy, dense sward we achieved in our renovations through the autumn and winter period when our workload shifts focus onto our winter sports areas. With the wet winter we had, the Clipless NT® application kept growth in check meaning we didn’t have to take any mowing equipment out onto the soft ground at any stage.”

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How to help rainfall rescue project

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How to help rainfall rescue project: If you’ve some time on your hands, here’s a UK rainfall project that’s caught our eye at Rain Bird Golf.

The weather is always a topic of conversation for Brits.  Can you, your staff or family members take part in the Rainfall Rescue project and add to our UK rainfall know-how?

How to help rainfall rescue project

How to help rainfall rescue project

The UK has rainfall records dating back 200 years or so, but the vast majority of these are in handwritten form and can’t easily be used to analyse past periods of flooding and drought. Professor Ed Hawkins is a Reading University scientist who has run a number of “weather rescue” projects but this is the biggest yet.

The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer hand-written data to online spreadsheets.

The project is looking to fill the yawning gap in UK digital rain gauge records between the 1820s and 1950s.

Each of the 65,000 scanned sheets contains monthly rainfall totals for a particular decade at a particular station, approximately three to five million data points in all. If Prof Hawkins’ team can convert this information to a digital format, it could lead to a much better understanding of the frequency and scale of big droughts and floods. And, that will assist with planning for future flood and water-resource infrastructure.

For example, many across the country had a sodden start to the year because of heavy rainfall. Meteorologists suspect October 1903 was just as bad, if not worse, but unfortunately, because all the rainfall data from that time was hand-written, it’s not possible to analyse this data. Likewise, there were some very dry springs and winters in the 1880s and 1890s. Britain had six or seven very dry winters and springs on the trot. If that happened today, it would probably cause serious problems for water companies because they rely on wet winters and wet springs to recharge reservoirs.

Prof Ed Hawkins explains, “Water companies have to plan for a one-in-100 or one-in-500-year drought but we’ve only got 60 years of very dense digital data, and so it’s very hard for them to come up with reliable estimates. We know there are periods in the past that, if they happened again, would probably break the system. The same is true for very heavy rainfall and floods.

You’re not required to rummage through old bound volumes; the Met Office has already scanned the necessary documents – all 65,000 sheets. You simply have to visit a website, read the scribbled rainfall amounts and enter the numbers into a series of boxes. If you do just a couple of minutes every now and then – that’s great,” said Prof Ed Hawkins. “If you want to spend an hour doing 30 or 40 columns – then that’ll be amazing. But any amount of time, it will all add up and be a tremendous help.”

This can literally take 5 minutes – why not use your tea-break?
Take part in the Rainfall Rescue project here.

If you choose a particular year to work on, why that year? Is it the year your golf course opened or the year you held your most memorable tournament? Share your story on Twitter with #rainfallrescueUK. Tag@rainbirdgolfuk and we’ll share your story too!

Jimmy Sandison – Regional Golf Sales Manager – UK, Ireland, Iceland and Scandinavia

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Greenkeepers work fury

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Greenkeepers work fury: Greenkeepers at Caird Park Golf Club in Dundee are said to be fuming they are being forced to continue going in to work despite two of their colleagues testing positive for coronavirus, according to the region’s Evening Telegraph.

A report from BIGGA last week claimed that it was in their understanding that greenkeepers are able to keep “essential maintenance” of golf courses should they wish to, despite the UK lockdown for COVID-19 so that golfers would still have courses to play when the health crisis is over.

Union bosses are said to be backing the call for greenkeepers at the club to be off work due to two members of staff testing positive for COVID-19, with one other self-isolating due to having symptoms.

A decision to remove staff workers from the course is now being strongly backed by union bosses representing the club.

“Following the confirmation of the cases the remaining staff feel they shouldn’t be asked to go into work,” said Dundee branch secretary of the GMB, Jim Cunningham.

“The union is backing this call and we are demanding that our members should not have to go to work in the meantime. We have asked that the remaining workforce is currently removed from such  hazardous duties.”

He added: “We have been told that golf courses must be maintained so that when the current crisis is over they can immediately come back into use.

“However, we don’t believe that the greenkeepers and groundsman are essential staff currently. City council gardeners are not working at the moment and we don’t think our members should have to either.”

It is also claimed in the report that members of staff were not being supplied with the correct level of protective equipment with which to go about doing thejr jobs on the course.

Click here to read the original article

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