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Limagrain Praised At Peterborough

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Limagrain Praised At Peterborough: Rob Bradshaw, currently operating as head groundsman at his beloved Peterborough United FC’s Mick George Training Academy, has spoken of his satisfaction at both the product and the service he receives from Limagrain UK.

Rob has admitted that he is currently ‘living the dream’. As a lifelong Posh fan, not only is he working for the club that he loves but he is also doing a job that he loves. After starting his career working for Huntingdon District Council he accepted the head groundsman position at One Leisure sports centre in St Ives and during his time here he picked up two Institute of Groundsmanship (IOG) national awards.

Limagrain Praised At Peterborough

In between his current full-time role at the Mick George Training Academy, Rob is a pitch advisor for the Huntingdonshire FA and also runs a Sport England funded grounds association in the areas of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. So passionate about providing the best surfaces he can, he even admits to sleeping in his car after tending to the pitches through the night.

“Yes, I’ve had nights out in the car park but you have to do it sometimes,” he said. “I take pride in my work and I want what is best – for the players and for the club.”

Rob has been at Peterborough United FC for two years now and after a season of settling in he soon decided it was time to make his mark.

“It got to February time when I really wanted to start planning, make some improvements and finalise where we were going to go with our end of season renovations. Firstly, I needed to choose a good grass seed because I only want to use the best products here. I did my homework on various products and gave a number of companies the opportunity to come in.

“The Limagrain MM60 seed seemed to be the number one choice in my opinion. I know that a lot of other professional clubs use it and I have used various Limagrain products in the past – it has always been a proven package.”

Limagrain’s MM60 grass seed is renowned for producing an excellent playing surface on a number of winter sports pitches. It is a 100% Ryegrass formula which is perfect for renovation and divot repair, has a high disease resistance, fantastic aesthetic qualities and offers extremely fast germination – which is boosted by the inclusion of Headstart GOLD®.

Developed using the latest scientific findings and field experience, Headstart GOLD® is a natural revolutionary grass seed treatment that ensures rapid germination and is perfect for enhancing performance on grass seed coatings for sports fields, golf courses, lawns and amenity turf.

“We had good germination within 10-12 days and we had excellent coverage,” said Rob. “It’s important that I have a seed like MM60 which recovers quickly from damage and wear because of the amount of usage we have here. Last year, as well as training, we had 260 games on the two pitches so to have that dense, hard wearing sward which the MM60 provides is ideal.

Limagrain Praised At Peterborough

“I’d also like to add that, aside from the success of the products, I have been really impressed by the service, the back-up and the advice I receive from Limagrain UK. When I was deciding on what seed to use Richard Sheppard (amenity seed specialist for Limagrain UK) came in and was very helpful. In my experience you don’t always get that level of professional back-up and I just can’t fault the company in any kind of way.”

For further information, please contact Limagrain UK on 01472 371471 or visit the company’s website www.lgseeds.co.uk/mm.

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Trilo A Help At Mid Herts GC

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Trilo A Help At Mid Herts GC: Located in the Hertfordshire countryside, Mid Herts Golf Club is one of only a few heathland courses based in Hertfordshire. After being neglected for a number of years, a project is underway to re-establish the native heather around the 18 holes by Course Manager Jody Wilson. Assisting Jody in creating the ideal growing conditions, is his team of five greenkeepers, and a fleet of machinery from Trilo. 

“I first came across the Trilo product during my time at Woburn Golf Club, where we purchased one of the first machines in the UK” explains Jody, who has now been at Mid Herts for 13 years. “In my opinion they are leading the market for leaf and debris collection so when our previous machine started causing us problems, I turned to Trilo to look at alternatives.” With two Trilo BL740 blowers already in the shed, he added an S4 vacuum sweeper to his collection over the winter of 2017/18.

Trilo A Help At Mid Herts GC

The club has been working closely with Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust on a plan to open up woodland areas to encourage the regeneration of heather, which has been a big project for Jody. “We have a lot of oak trees which have encroached on the course over the years which means our leafing season goes on and on. Heather and long grasses don’t like organic matter, so in an effort to create the right conditions, we collect every single leaf that falls – a daily task in the winter. We use our BL740’s to blow the debris off the course where it is then collected up in the S4.” In use from the moment it arrived, the S4 collected over 140 loads (or 560m3!) of leaves over the autumn/winter period.

While mainly used for leaf collection, Jody also has the flail attachment for the S4 meaning they can now cut and collect the long roughs in one pass, which was previously conducted by two separate machines. “Now we can do both jobs simultaneously, we’re saving time and manpower and the interchangeable attachments make it a versatile, year-round machine.”

“Where we’ve been clearing the leaves away, the heather has been naturally reoccurring across the course. It’s been an ongoing project for me for the last 10-11 years, but we’re now making real progress. Both us as greenkeepers, and the players, are delighted.”

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Toro “The Best” At Huntercombe

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Toro “The Best” At Huntercombe: Huntercombe Golf Club, celebrating the recent success of being named the number one course in Oxfordshire by the Top 100 Golf Courses, has switched to Toro for its irrigation system because according to course manager Grant Stewart “it’s the best on the market” for covering compact tees and vast greens.

The historic golf course designer Willie Park Junior designed and owned Huntercombe, and to this day the course continues to be played to the original 1901 layout. With some greens on the 18-hole course near Henley-on-Thames over 1000m2, finding the right sprinklers to guarantee thorough, even coverage was of the utmost importance says Grant:

Toro "The Best" At Huntercombe

“Huntercombe has large greens. Altogether they cover 1.7 hectares, with some up to 1000m2! We chose Flex 55 for the job because of the distance they can cover. We installed a ring main around the larger greens to control the pressure, which allowed us to feed the heads with water to cover two directions. The heads on my fourth green put out 16 litres of water a second, guaranteeing every inch of that big green is well watered.”

Applying equally efficient irrigation to the small tees are the Toro T5 sprinklers. Grant continues: “We have the opposite problem on the tees in that some of them are quite small, so we needed to find a sprinkler that would work well in a much smaller area.”

With an operating area of 6.5-12m, it’s easy to see why the T5s fit the bill. But something all the sprinklers have in common, including the FLEX 35 also used on the greens, is their maintenance and ease of use, as Grant explains: “The best feature of all the sprinklers we’ve chosen are the heads which allow us to change the arcs when they are running with no tools. I can move the heads to water any area and don’t have to be concerned that the gears will be damaged.”

The brains behind this irrigation brawn is the Lynx central control system chosen because trying it at another club showed Grant just how easy it was to use. But surpassing all these reasons for opting for Toro irrigation is the fact that Grant, who has been at the club for two years, with previous deputy roles at Sunningdale in Ascot and Fairmont St Andrews has the support of a greenkeeping team of eight, knows and trusts the brand:

“I looked to Toro irrigation to get the same quality of irrigation product as the machinery we use. I have always used Toro machinery and know it to be reliable, so when the time was right to invest in a new irrigation system there was no question I’d go with Toro, it was more a case of which items in the range would best suit our needs.”

Completing the order with Reesink Turfcare is a selection of Toro machinery including the Groundsmaster 3500-D, two Greensmaster TriFlex 3420 mowers, a Multi Pro 1750 and a Workman MDX-D, all of which will no doubt play some part in helping Grant and the team in their endeavours to reduce thatch in the greens. The aim being to improve the species of grass in the playing surfaces and aid regeneration work over the next couple of years, with Grant concluding: “We’re very proud to now be a ‘Total Solutions’ club.”

For more information, visit: reesinkturfcare.co.uk

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GoGreen Impresses At Rustington

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GoGreen Impresses At Rustington: According to Head Greenkeeper Rob Hill the unique nine-hole course at Rustington Golf Centre in West Sussex is looking the best it has ever been thanks to Sherriff Amenity’s GoGreen Select.

Rustington Golf Centre was opened in 1992 and offers a number of unique facilities for golfers of all abilities. It boasts a driving range, a putting green, a par 3 academy course and a nine-hole, 18-tee par 70 course.

GoGreen Impresses At Rustington

Rob, who has been in the greenkeeping industry throughout his whole career, has been the Head Greenkeeper for just over two years. His team consists of four greenkeepers, including himself, as well as a horticulturalist.

“There is a common misconception that we have quite a large team for a nine-hole course,” says Rob. “However, it is actually very challenging because there are 18 tees and effectively people are playing the course twice which means we have a lot of wear – it is double the traffic of a normal 9-hole golf course. We also have a hectares worth of greens and land wise we look after a 4 acre garden which belongs to the owner.

“We tend to every facility here and I feel we have to be slightly more intense with our maintenance procedures.”

To maintain the impressive course and teaching facilities at Rustington Golf Centre, Rob chooses to use a variety of Sherriff Amenity products which includes the GoGreen range. Throughout his career Rob has seen impressive results from the long-lasting iron granules (GoGreen Granules) and in liquid form (GoGreen Plus), as well as GoGreen Energy – a concentrated bio-stimulant, formulated to assist plant health and relieve stress symptoms. It was the performance of these products which led to him using GoGreen Select.

“With GoGreen Select you apply it out and an hour later you see a dramatic change in colour – it provides an instant green-up. In fact, I bought one drum and before I had even finished it I was on the phone ordering another one – it is that good.”

GoGreen Select is a unique complex iron sulphate that may be used as a stand-alone product for rapid greening of turf or more flexibly, as a tank-mix partner with fertiliser and herbicide. Unlike ferrous sulphate and chelated iron, that can react forming precipitate and rendering the spray solution unusable, GoGreen Select is stable and provides a range of spraying options not normally associated with the use of iron.

GoGreen Impresses At Rustington

“It works incredibly well as a tank mix partner,” says Rob. “Initially, I used it at the start of May on my fairways which was mixed in with a three-way selective herbicide mix and Evolution Xtra 46.0.0 Soluble. The results were brilliant and it was a great boost to start the season – not only did it get rid of the weeds thanks to the herbicides, but it gave us really good colour and presentation.

“It is such a versatile product and I have started mixing GoGreen Select with Primo Maxx II on my tees and approaches as well. The course presentation is arguably the best it has ever been and that is based on feedback from the golfers as well.”

GoGreen Select was recommended to Rob by Joseph Dormer, Amenity Specialist for Sherriff Amenity, and Rob was quick to praise the support he receives.

“Joseph offers fantastic knowledge and will always give me that little bit extra advice when I need it. Quite regularly we will go for a walk around the course, look at anything the turf might require and talk through what improvements we could make.”

For further information, please contact Sherriff Amenity on 01638 721 888 or visit www.sherriffamenity.com

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Double Irrigation At Breadsall Priory

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Double Irrigation At Breadsall Priory: Breadsall Priory Marriott Hotel and Country Club in Derbyshire has renovated two ageing irrigation systems to one Lynx control system from Toro to keep its 18-hole Championship Priory Course and Moorland Course in top condition.

Course manager John Smith explains: “When our previous control systems began experiencing communication errors and electrical breakdowns, we didn’t know if the grass was getting the water it needed. The systems urgently needed to change, but we didn’t want to unnecessarily overhaul all the wiring and pipework.

Double Irrigation At Breadsall Priory

“Completely replacing everything would have resulted in huge costs, but with the help of Reesink Turfcare’s Toro irrigation team, including Peter Newton and Cevan Edwards, we discovered we only needed to upgrade the two control systems and have saved a lot of money thanks to the renovating rather than replacing.”

“The install went without a hitch,” John recalls: “Before upgrading the systems, Toro technicians came to check the 28-year-old wiring would be compatible with Lynx and, finding that it was, returned in the winter of last year to undertake the renovation. Four guys made fast work of completing the install in just one and half weeks, with no disruption to golfers or our maintenance programme.”

Delighted with Lynx, John enthuses: “We’ve been using Lynx since April of this year and, as the oldest Marriott Hotel in the world with a reputation to uphold, having a comprehensive system we can rely on to irrigate both courses has given us great peace of mind. Now we have total control over when water goes on, the flow rate, and the trajectory. Lynx has really improved the efficiency, versatility and reliability of our irrigation routine.”

Having been witness to how well Lynx performs, John decided to add to the renovation project by upgrading the sprinklers, too, hoping to see even more benefit to the club’s irrigation. The perfect partner to Lynx, Toro Infinity sprinklers have replaced the sprinklers across multiple greens on the Championship Priory Course that were “in need of updating.”

John says: “We chose to start changing our sprinklers over to Infinity for improved performance and ease of maintenance. What I like about the new sprinklers is that to perform any kind of maintenance you can access everything you need from the surface. Being able to make changes without digging up or replacing bodies is a real time and money saver. Plus, the sprinkler heads have diversified nozzles offering a range of trajectories to suit the changing needs of the turf. As a result we’ve decided to phase an Infinity upgrade on all of the greens over the next few years.”

With the successful renovation behind it, Breadsall is looking to further innovate the way it irrigates the courses: “Using Lynx and Infinity from April has already made the quality of our turf far better, which is so important for our ancient site. Next up, we want to extract water from our lake to irrigate the courses and, given the great experience we’ve just had with Reesink, we will be working with them again to improve our lake’s water quality with an Otterbine aerator,” John concludes.

For more information, visit: reesinkturfcare.co.uk

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