Pisces natare oportet.

3 Weeks in now and time to reflect, sitting in the corner of a darkened room, rocking back and forth muttering obscenities about this and that.. No I say .. No.. that's a normal Saturday Night for me... It's time to think about this ... this thing instead...

So here we are, none the wiser, a little poorer definitely, but a few things have been clarified or at least thoughts have been strengthened a little.. I still have the numbers to crunch, probably make some fancy lil charts you know like people who know what they are doing do, but I am not expecting the answer to what I seek to be there slapping me round the chops with data... Hell if it was that simple someone far smarter than me would be able to tell me all about it by now...

So the Story so far...

Something odd made me think.. but I could not find an answer to explain fully what I was seeing.

So I started looking and the more I looked, the more intriguing it became 

This is about half of the 'collection' from mainly Golf Greens, a few Fairways and a couple of Roughs interspersed with some Football Pitches. Majority would be amended soil rather than sand constructions although there are a few 'USGA's' in there.

The more I looked, prodded, poked and soaked the more clear it became that as an industry we have absolutely NO understanding of one of the MAIN factors in the top regions of soil in most managed surfaces I was looking at.

to the point that I was wondering where all this money was being spent, that wasn't being spent 15 years ago I must add, on 'treating' a problem that it wasn't actually treating yet all the great and good seemed to think they were dealing with it not bypassing it........ Hhmmmmmm quick dose of Irony anyone?

So I do my 'Soil Gladiators' run to compare the 4 sites with different regimes, locations and swards, and as expected I end up with a couple more questions, have galvanised a couple of theories and understand a little more what my eyes are seeing.... So whilst I sit in that darkened corner I decide to go back and see if there is any change to my early Air Dried samples, had the effect degraded  over time?

Hell no it seems not....

I check them all and if they were they still were, if they weren't then it was the same so time alone will not affect this, well at least not if the soil is dry, these coatings must be tough, no cracking or flaking some of these samples have been dry for 4 months now.

Oh yes and for those that sit there saying its the sand.... NO it isn't.... above is some lovely pure sand, it loves water but then again it hasn't had any grass over it to change that.......

So in Summary I did me comparison of a Links, Fescue/Bent on a Brew regime after years of abuse, one a lowly but very sound Public Course, Poa and standard management, another Links, 'pure' Fescue being 'cleaned' of a little Fog and others, on a lean and sand regime and finally a PURE Poa course uncertain inputs but high maintenance for sure.
There were some surprises but it is thought that just shows the long term effect of soil abuse, there were a couple of preconceptions that were strengthened a little to the point that certainly age of sward has a distinct factor over others on comparison of certain factors but probably not as much as sward composition, I think Poa is a prolific creator of the problems seen, in fact from a pure competitive survival view in nature almost makes you think it is manipulating factors to suit itself, goodness no .. not possible, its only grass...

If you thought I was going to give a load of facts and figures here now .. HA! .. not had time yet and what will they prove, what will they count for? Not a lot I would guess... What am I going to put out there?... Not a lot I would guess.. Not on here anyways... what.. am I mad or something?

Conjecture you all shout.... Who cares? My Blog, My Rules, My Obsessions..

BUT what I will do is share what has come out of this... the realisation that for any of this to count, to be taken serious it needs formulating, it needs verification, it needs consistency and replication...

So the next stage is to take a series of cores from a single area of 1 Green and to compare these after treating each one differently (Thanks to the proper clever ones out there who without realising showed me the next stage)

This lil one is 4 months old now and going strong despite some severe abuse so lets see what the others can take.

So here we have it, plan is for 15 Cores from 1 sq.m of a Green so there is chance of consistency throughout

1 Control to be tested before, 14 for different variants of 'treatment' to see what is actually affecting or what is allowing the problem to exasperate.

 They will be placed as a core on the sand bases above, will be 'pipe' contained to prevent damage and keep some integrity to the cores. Will set it all up this weekend for sampling next... Just need to find a Donor Course now.......

And I really need some better kit, need to make up a list, hell I even got Lab Envy going on with ol JJ Dempsey, love that set up..... One day..... One day I tell you..

But still the cheap Ebay stuff still allows you to see this...

and to see stuff like this

That's the fascinating stuff, the 'deal' just need to perfect some of the staining processes to get the best out of it.....

Right get out here... have you seen the time?