Sand or Soil in trenches the great debate

Sand or Soil in trenches the great debate

This is always a tricky question and it often has to take into consideration a lot of scope like size of trench, depth of trench, time of year, soil moisture levels, quality of the soil to be used, cost, man hours available, equipment available and much more, since we have a few letters of complaint about the decision to use sand instead of soil I am putting forward the pros and cons sheet we used in deciding to go with sand:

    

            SOIL PROS-

·   Readily available stockpile so little cost to source product

·   Same soil that was originally in the ground

SOIL CONS

·  Contained a lot of stones

·  Very clumpy (not friable) thus hard to work with

·  Gets caught in top of trenches thus creating air pockets , which after rain can collapse leaving a trench that thought filled only quarter filled

·  Hidden safety hazard – in that the trench appears solid but is not.. potential duty of care problem for people who sink it to the trench thinking it to be full but is not

·  Rain or irrigation made very muddy and sticky also soft so mud everywhere, and again a hazard if you stood directly on trench

·  Heavy rain or irrigation  on sloped areas still some wash out as the fine particles went along with the water flow

· The wash off out of the trench to the low areas hard to clean up and made a boggy area where it pooled or settled

· Soil has less heat generation than sand (heat to help couch runners grow into trenches)

SAND PROS –

· Sand will fill trenches from the bottom up to  the top (thus leaving no air pockets)

· Easy to work with, easy to load, and shovel, also can use level lawns to achieve level surface

· No safety problems with a trench collapsing  as when stood on  if it looks filled and solid it is

· Can mix seed in with sand to help stabilize in trench for erosion prevention help

· Sand heats up well thus helping the couch in the fairways to grow into the trenches

· Sand is the preferred growing media for Couch thus will put a lot of root system into trenches (this is why the greens are made of sand not soil)

· A lot cleaner as in no mud tracks and no mud on shoes from walking on the sand

· If after rain some sand washes it is easy to pick up the wash and replace or can be rubbed in to the low area where it has settled and used as topdressing to fill in that hollow

· If irrigation pipe has leak or problem  at joiner or fitting it is much easier to dig up around it if there is sand instead of soil

SAND CONS –

· Costs to buy in

· Heavy rain will wash out trenches on slopping areas

These are the pros and cons that came out of a brain storming exercise with the ground staff and irrigation instillation crew and I think that any reasonable person reading the whole list could come to the same conclusion as we did and that sand is the way to go, accept that there will be some wash outs but after a few top-ups it will grow in fine.I hope this answers the questions to those that have written letters in ,  but take note that if the trenches were wider or not as deep then the pros and cons list could and would have looked different.

So to the next part of the plan with the fairways now picking up the growth rate we would like some volunteers to help us out with topping up the trenches we plan to do this on Monday afternoons from 1.00pm to 2.00 pm if we can get 12 people to help the staff we will be able to get 2 crews going and will get it done over 4 weeks.

Hope this clears some thing up….. till next time keep swinging…pete 

week 33 2011 update

Well with the weather providing great days the turf is slowly starting to move, we continue to top up the trenches and we have also started to feed the fairways to help the growth along.

Our plan this growing season is to take advantage of the flood water which took out allot of the weeds in the fairways and this spring we will spray out the remainder of the weed so at the end of the growing season all the fairways will be similar to the 4th and 5th which were the fairways done first with the weed eradication.

We also have to address the issue of the sediment that remains just under the leaf surface so over the next few weeks we will be applying gypsum and other products that will help break down the sediment and help incorporate it into the soil profile. Along with our product applications we will also be verti-draining these areas.

Renovations this spring will be very important as the greens missed out on the February renovation. If you want to see what greens go like if you dont renovate take a look at the 12th and the practice putter the compaction effects show up very well on these two at he moment.

Unfortunantly the coring contractor we use is closing up his business, so we will have to fend for ourselves, which is going to be interesting as we don't have equipment to do this, so at the moment we are in the process of finding equipment we can either hire or loan. So this reno we will be starting late Sunday afternoon the 3rd of October.

The turfed areas are all taking well we have feed these up over the last two weeks and the root system is down about 7cm so we are getting closer to being able to play off these a light topdress and another 7cm of root growth should be right on the money so possible 3 weeks if all goes well.

so till next time ...keep swinging  pete