Grass Clippings
Around our autumn grounds
Mid-October is still a busy time of the year in Course and Grounds, and we have a number of projects in progress. Renovations on the croquet lawns are in progress after being slightly delayed due to the events’ calendar on the lawns this autumn.
There is a lot of preparation for the inflation of the airhall domes including checking and renewing lights and light fittings. On the golf course, we still have fairway top dressing going on and as I type, the articulated lorries delivering the sand enter stage left and out it all goes onto the golf course on the top dresser, stage right. At the moment it’s a race against time and weather as the rain which will stop proceedings is coming in from the west towards the end of the week, so we are running to complete the task in double-quick time.
This will be the tenth year of sand application and, for the results, as fictional amateur gardener Arthur Fallowfield, used to say, ‘the answer lies in the soil.’ A decade of dressing has now permeated down some eight inches and has improved the silt loam soil which constitutes our base material. The general improvements are that the fairways remain drier throughout the winter and, I think that any golfer who walks from rough onto fairways will agree.
But, beyond the obvious, the benefits to the grass plant are even more advantageous to the game. Seeing a healthy root mass consistently at those depths is quite an achievement and we are now seeing the results from the new blends of seed which have been introduced into the fairways over the past six years making a significantly contribution to firmer and more playable fairways.
Tip top trees
The results of a recent study on Exeter’s tree canopy have highlighted that there are 179,000 trees, within the city limits. The study identified a total of 59 tree species in Exeter. Among the most prevalent are Ash (26,900 trees), English Oak (18,400 trees), Sycamore, and Silver Birch (both with 13,000 trees each). The astounding things is the air quality improvement that number of trees can impact on a city of this size. This number of trees is capable of removing four tonnes of air pollutants annually with an associated value of £279,000 addressing pollutants such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), particulate matter (PM2.5), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Exeter’s trees reduce surface water runoff by over 82,000 m³ annually, saving an estimated £257,000 in water treatment costs. The trees within the city store 61,200 tonnes of carbon, and they actively sequester an additional 1,510 tonnes of carbon every year. This ecosystem service is valued at £56.6 million for carbon storage and £1.4 million for annual sequestration. There is a lot more to trees than what meets the eye.
Prize pumpkin
Halloween is only a little over week away and pumpkins are in the shops in anticipation that lanterns will be on everyone’s mind. But for one man in Minnesota, carving up his home-grown pumpkin was the last thing on his mind last week. Travis Gienger, a horticulture and landscape teacher was about to harvest his beast of a fruit which he drove all the way to the 50th World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. The pumpkin needed its own trailer for the ride to California and had to be loaded by forklift truck very carefully indeed. At the weigh in the pumpkin, which isn’t the handsomest gourd in the world, pipped the previous year’s record by adding 49 pounds (lbs) to the world record. The record-breaking pride and joy of Travis came in at a staggering weigh I of 2,749 pounds. For his efforts, Gienger won $9 per pound, ($24,741) as well as a special $30,000 ‘mega-prize’ for the new world-record breaking pumpkin. ‘I was not expecting that. It was quite the feeling,’ Gienger told The Associated Press.