Well this will be a bumper one then won't it...
So this is the stage the cores are at right now....
Yep that's it they are free... released of their pipe shackles.. free from abuse and force feeding..
So what is next for the little ones....?
They are cut up, poked, prodded, pummeled, nuked, burnt to a crisp, drowned and sent off to a little place called The Laboratory, well a small bit of them is anyway.
Yes you read that right... a proper Lab, people who know what the hell they are doing and have proper equipment to do it with.
I wanted to put some .... perspective... to all this that could be 'accepted' by the 'doubters and scoffers' so the only way to do that is some proper testing to go alongside this blarney and fortunately I have some close friends who have been mad enough to help share the cost of this.... Can you imagine how much this all costs? Well we can't afford to do all 14 cores so 11 have been selected (10 plus Control off the Green) and part of them has been dispatched for some analysis and inspection.
Similarly the range of tests that could be undertaken is immense so I have had to limit what is looked at from a budget perspective to....
Particle Size Distribution - but only one! look at where they came from...
Chemical Analysis - to see what if anything is different chemically to each.
Biological Analysis - to see what if anything is different biologically to each.
Add to that the incidental stuff I can do like pH, the percolation tests, turbidity, moisture etc etc and there may or may not be a picture or pattern at the end of it.......
So... to my little friends .. this is what I did in the past week or so:
Each core was 'assessed' visually
Then, like Christmas it was just a case of unwrapping them to have a peek inside
This is why I thought the Perforated Pipe would be better as it allowed me to 'get at' the sample in one piece, not sure if it was right or not, in terms of practical it works but there is the chance of variable conditions with the wrapping I suppose which will be 'tutted' at by some but I do not think that it would be the difference between a core flourishing or not... not with what I was chucking on anyway.
So here we have Patient X, as you can see there is a break... there was always a break by the way, they all had it, this Green is or should I say has an inherent layer at the break caused by the original turf back in the 90's when she was built, with a lack of aeration or disturbance to break that layer out topdressing has dropped it to where it is now.
I then take the core and split it to the 3 Zones... You see I don't like this blinkered one dimensional view of soil in Greens, it is different at different depths, it changes its properties and how it acts regardless of whether its a Push-up or USGA there will be differences and that is what I am drawn too. So here we have the Top, Mid and Base Zones that alongside with the Bed Sand I will play with.
Moisture is one of the first, I could prod it with a fancy meter but I stopped trusting that in the Winter as the EC levels were so low everything was 17% moisture, even in the puddles!
So here I take a set amount (give or take a gram or 2) from each and weigh it then nuke it... 800 secs in my lil microwave is just enough to not burn it so they have ALL had the exact same protocol for weight/moisture.
The copper fittings I use are great for me as I can not afford any nice precision stainless steel rings yet, they are the exact same size and weight as each other (I checked) so they get me a uniform soil amount, I have used these for insitu Bulk Density Sampling which whilst would be interesting here it needs to be into virgin soil for any worth so I ignoring the weight/volume aspects
So they are weighed... Yes laugh will you, I can hear yet again the tutting and head shaking, these may look crap BUT they are 1/4 gram accurate which is miles better than any digital scale I can afford, for the purpose of this I am going 1/2 gram accuracy to take the subjective view element out.
And then we inspect, poke, scrape, look, touch and smell
Each Zone is opened up, photographed, described and logged and then sampled up.
A clever guy I have come across said he was dependent on somewhere for their consumables...
Well for me it's the Pound Shop or Ebay for most, these tubs, 10p each, cheap enough to bin after if they break or nuke clean if I want to reuse.
Each Core was split to 4 Samples for storing with these being split on again to allow drying and for the 10 to go off to Lab so that's something like 120 tubs.. I need a bigger shed already!
And so the next run of tests begin, 9 only here as that is all I had available, a 24hr Distilled Water Agitation & Soak before extract and first EC readings taken. The front 3 are from a Green oop North that is being 'looked at' also. I will tell more about this test run later.
Soooooo what have I discovered so far.. Hell far too early to say anything yet but it all forms part of the overall 'Picture'.
Talking of 'Pictures', here's a quick run of the 14 so far..
H2O
Sugar
Gypflo
Penetrative Wetter
Oxygen Booster
Liquid Feed
Iron
Marmite
Coated Fertiliser
Worm Suppressant
Curative Wetter
Mix A
Mix B
So that's them all bagged, tagged and locked down...
One thing you may have noticed if you were not asleep ....
Black Layer... My God did I manage to make some! and not exclusive to the 'Good or Bad' either The smell was rough with most too, even some of the ones without Black Layer they smelled like they ought to have it... But then when you chuck that much water and product on something has to give...
Well it's all logged and noted, will see the relevance to what it was in relation to what they had etc etc etc or if its just down to the layer..
So onwards to the next stage....................
