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GKB At “The Most Beautiful Ground”

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GKB At “The Most Beautiful Ground”: Cricket Manager and former head groundsman for the Wormsley estate, Simon Tremlin heads the team responsible for maintaining the Wormsley Cricket Pitch in Buckinghamshire, which is often referred to as ‘the most beautiful ground in Britain’.

When Mick Jagger introduced Sir Paul Getty to cricket, the millionaire philanthropist formed such an affection for the sport he had a replica of The Oval built on the grounds of his estate. The pitch was completed in 1992 and the first match played there was attended by Her Majesty The Queen Mother, the then Prime Minister John Major, Sir Michael Caine and cricket legends Denis Compton and Brian Johnston. What is now known as ‘Sir Paul Getty’s Ground’, Wormsley has in recent years played host to England Women’s test matches against Australia and India.

GKB At "The Most Beautiful Ground"

With such a reputation to live up to he’s naturally very selective about the machinery he uses and a requirement for a scarifier and seeder led him to official GKB dealers RT Machinery near Aylesbury.

“We do a lot of contracting work as well as looking after Wormsley,” says Simon “and it’s important to know the machines we use are sturdy enough to meet our needs. Last year we did forty- two cricket squares as well as rugby and football pitches.” RT Machinery arranged with GKB Machines’ Tom Shinkins for demonstrations of GKB’s VStrong and Combiseeder at Wormsley. “We wanted a scarifier that collects as well and the VStrong showed us it’s ideal for that, leaving a tidy finish and saving time, especially in damp conditions.” Simon adds.

The VStrong follows in the tradition of GKB’s Combinator and employs generically developed 3mm carbide scarifying blades attached to the rotor using their Quick-Lock system. An operating depth of 5cm is easily attained without missing any areas. The operating speed of up to 12km/h is a real benefit for the professional contractor, with fast removal of thatch and weed with the ability to collect at the same time.

The GKB Combiseeder can be used for overseeding and initial seeding and features two spiked rollers that open up the soil for the seed to then be spread accurately across the full width, in and around the holes. Creating over 1500 holes per m² the Combiseeder provides accurate seed application at various rates to suit different seed mixes, with drag brushes to incorporate seed and topdressing for minimal surface disruption.

“We’ve gone with the GKB machines for the way they perform and they are robust enough to withstand the punishment of contracting work,” says Simon, “and we have plenty of that ahead as well as maintaining Sir Paul Getty’s Ground.” GKB machines can be seen at work in an open day at RT Machinery, Nether Winchendon near Aylesbury on the 5th September 2018 and local demonstrations can be arranged.

For more information, visit: www.gkbmachines.com

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Wilson Top Of The Turf League

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Wilson Top Of The Turf League: Eric Wilson from Whitby Town has been named as the best groundsmen in the Northern Premier League, along with Non-League’s national runner-up at the Football Association’s 2018 Groundsmen of the Year Awards.

Pictured last season after being highly commended by the judges of the annual contest to honour Non-League’s top turf stars for his work at the Turnbull Ground, Wilson easily outstripped that this time around to collect the EVO-STIK League’s top honour and take second spot nationally at Steps 3 to 4 of the National League System behind Tonbridge Angels.

Like the groundsmen and women at the number one clubs in the Isthmian League, Southern League and National League, Wilson and the Seasiders are also looking forward to banking cheques for £12,500 to spend on ground maintenance from Budweiser, the new sponsor of the annual accolades.

The EVO-STIK League Premier Division club and Wilson are no strangers to honours after being named in June alongside Trafford and Loughborough Dynamo at the NPL’s end of season awards as one of the inaugural winners of the GreenFields Pitch of the Year accolades.

Matlock Town’s Richard Lomas left the FA’s St George’s Park on Thursday with plenty to shout about too, second place behind Wilson, both in the NPL and nationally. Elfyn Jones at Colwyn Bay will have an extra spring in his step around Llanelian Road as he prepares for the new season after taking third spot in the EVO-STIK League and being highly commended nationally.

Regular finalists Mick Grimmer at Stocksbridge Park Steels and Witton Albion’s Peter Robinson, along with last season’s NPL number one, Belper Town’s Phil Varney, all left the event with high commendations from the the FA’s judging panel of expert professional groundsman from the English Football League and Premier League.

The league’s representatives were honoured after a series of on-site assessments at nominated grounds last season that not only looked at the quality of the pitches but also took into consideration the skills and knowledge of the finalists, their ambitions for the pitch, the resources available, pitch use and the amount of time they were able to work on their surfaces during one of the worst winters and toughest seasons in years.

More than a 100 groundsmen from all levels of the game were rewarded for their work at this season’s ceremony in front of their peers. EVO-STIK League representative Paul Hatt, along with Brent Clayton from the NPL’s sponsors at the Frank Whittle Partnership, were also at the prestigious state-of-the-art venue near Burton to congratulate the 2018 winners.

Guests at the 17th running of the annual awards also got the chance to quiz a panel of professional groundsmen at a Q&A session and enjoy a presentation from Mark Pover, the FA’s head of facilities and investment, before lunch and the awards ceremony.

* Official pitch partners GreenFields agreed a new three year deal with the EVO-STIK League in June after honouring their inaugural Pitch of the Year winners at Blackpool’s Hilton Hotel. Appointed last summer as the NPL’s official pitch partners for the historic 2017-18 50th anniversary campaign, the sports turf specialists are looking forward to working with clubs until at least the end of the 2020-21 season.

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Get The Edge With Toro

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Get The Edge With Toro: To be blunt, Toro’s new bedknife is anything but. Thanks to the use of hardened tool steel, Toro’s EdgeMax bedknives stays sharper for longer, therefore bringing a crisper cut and less wear to Toro greens and fairway mowers, whilst also ensuring significant time and cost savings. 

Brought to the UK market by Reesink Turfcare, EdgeMax bedknives provide up to three times longer edge retention than a standard bedknife and means 50 percent less time is required adjusting, backlapping, grinding and replacing, tests performed by Toro confirm.

Get The Edge With Toro

There are multiple benefits to this: a cleaner, crisper cut for healthier turf, unrivalled after-cut appearance, significantly lower parts costs and a reduction in maintenance time. What’s more, bedknives that maintain their sharpness ensure the machine incurs less wear, enabling it to work more efficiently and smoothly.

Michael Hampton, parts manager at Reesink, says: “It will come as no surprise that together this combination equates to long-term cost and labour savings.”

By buying Toro, rather than a will-fit competitor, means you can also be reassured of consistent hole alignment on every bedknife, certified and trackable steels coils and computer controlled machining and finishing, thanks to Toro’s leading manufacturing process.

Available across Toro’s Greensmaster and Reelmaster ranges on models fitted with DPA (Dual Precision Adjustment) cutting units, EdgeMax bedknives bring a 9.5mm and above height of cut to fairways and a 1.59mm and above height of cut to greens. To find out more or place on order, contact Reesink’s parts department on 01480 226870.

For more information, visit: reesinkturfcare.co.uk

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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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Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

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Otterbine Diffuses The Situation: Weeks of high temperatures have turned golf courses across the country brown and triggered Amber health warnings, and while there’s not much to be done to counteract either, one thing you can do is keep your lakes and ponds well aerated to prevent them from becoming stagnate.

A perfect example of this on an epic scale comes from Frilford Heath, the 54-hole championship golf course complex near Oxford, which had an Otterbine Air Flo 3 diffuser installed in its 6m, 10-million-gallon reservoir to aerate the water two years ago. The idea was to make the water good enough quality to irrigate the course, says course manager Sid Arrowsmith.

Otterbine Diffuses The Situation

“We always knew this was a long-term and challenging project. The water comes from a brook downstream through farming fields, full of pollutants and run-off nitrates,” Sid says. “Add to the fact that the silt and sediment at the bottom of the reservoir literally hadn’t seen the light of day for ten years and we knew the diffuser had its work cut out. Even so, none of us expected the extent!

“We experienced, as anticipated, algal growth; the surprise was how much algal growth! Reesink’s Rob Jackson visited us regularly and I think even he was surprised at how abundant it was.”

But that’s nature for you. And water full of nutrients like Frilford Heath’s is, as Sid explains, “going to have an inordinate amount of organic mixture in it”. However, the Air Flo 3 kept busy and Sid “never once doubted” it was up to the job.

The water now is crystal clear again and while Sid is under no illusion that an algal bloom is possible, especially in this weather, the diffuser is ready for the challenge. “There is more oxygen in that reservoir than ever before. If we did incur another algal bloom, the water is in the best possible position to counteract it.”

Meantime, the water is being used all over the course, doing exactly what Sid intended. So, at what saving does this come? “Back in the very dry summers of ‘94, ‘95 and ‘96, we were spending £25,000 a year irrigating the course off the mains. It is literally a fraction of that now. The only thing we use mains water for is washing the turf machinery and toilet facilities.”

For Sid, the Otterbine diffuser has done exactly what he intended it to do – it has made 10-million-gallons of water ready to use and given the club a degree of self-sufficiency it hasn’t experienced before. And as Sid, a greenkeeping veteran, one of only 70 BIGGA Master Greenkeepers in the UK and ex-BIGGA president, says: “greenkeeping wouldn’t be greenkeeping without a few challenges along the way!”

And we guess that statement now includes the country’s longest heatwave for 42 years! It’s not all in the preparation either, Otterbine’s extensive range of efficient aerators can make quick work of smaller ponds and lakes, so if the hot weather is creating problem water features, contact Otterbine’s distributor Reesink today.

For more information, visit: reesinkturfcare.co.uk

For the latest industry news visit turfmatters.co.uk/news

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