The nutritional programme Bransford Golf Course deploys

By Alistair March 21, 2018 22:11 Updated

The unique ‘Florida style’ Bransford Golf Course at Worcester’s Bank House Hotel provides a challenge, not only to players of all abilities, but also to the greens team. For his nutritional programme, golf course manager Graham Wallace turns to Headland Amenity and regional manager Adi Masters to keep it playing to the highest of standards – together they have solved an issue with flushes of growth that had started to become difficult to manage.

“I’ve used Headland products for nearly 20 years,” says Graham, “and always find them to be effective, backed up with tried and tested knowledge and research. We apply their fertilisers and chemicals all over the course. For a number of years now we’ve used various formulations of Multigreen® temperature controlled release fertiliser on the fairways. Though this provided the high quality of grass and coverage we desired, in a warm spring, the initial flush of growth it delivered was increasing the amount of cutting required. We wanted to find a way to drop the growth back a bit whilst retaining the grass quality.”

Graham ran a trial across four of his fairways, comparing various products applied at varying rates to assess efficiency and results. A competitor product with a similar analysis to Multigreen® was applied at two different rates on two of the fairways, an alternative Headland product was trialled on the third and Graham’s normal choice, Multigreen® 28.3.15, on the final fairway. “We applied all of the products in April, except for the Multigreen® which Adi suggested we put down in March. His reason was that Multigreen® contains both quick and slow release sources of Nitrogen and applying it in April, when the temperature satisfied the release of both, is what caused the initial flush of growth,” he said.

“Though we achieved reasonable results from all of the products across our trial plots, in my opinion the Multigreen® outperformed them in terms of the sward density, colour, health, longevity and overall performance. By simply applying it a month earlier, we avoided the double whammy of nutrient release that was causing the flush of growth. Eight months after the initial application, Multigreen® was still delivering growth and solid results from its single application. Not only that but we’ve also now managed to cut back on the amount of growth regulator we’re having to apply, saving us around £600 a year.”