Overseeding at Banchory Golf Club solved bare green issue

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When Richard Mullen arrived at Banchory Golf Club as course manager in June 2015 he was met by bare greens.

But he immediately knew what to do – overseed with Rigby Taylor’s R9 perennial ryegrass.

“I’d used R9 before, and knew about the seed’s leaf quality and its ability to recover quickly,” he says. “But now I also needed a very speedy growth response to overcome a disastrous situation.”

Sowed in August / September 2015 during a few weeks of ‘agreeable’ temperatures, complemented by a thorough irrigation programme, R9 responded magnificently, says Richard, on a course characterised by highland bents and poa.

“There was fantastic germination within just seven to nine days – the growth was easy to see since the greens were so bare! We never looked back.”

And that success, he adds, was no surprise, based on his past experience with the seed when R9’s fine leaf quality and quick recovery were obvious.

R9 is a 100 per cent fine ryegrass and part of the ‘iCON’ programme of seeds from Rigby Taylor, the company at the forefront of supplying innovative products for the successful management and maintenance of turf surfaces.

It is one of a comprehensive portfolio of Rigby Taylor seeds which reduce mowing frequency but offer a host of advanced and unique specialised characteristics for high tolerance to wear, and drought and disease tolerance, for example.

With 25 years’ greenkeeping experience, most recently 10 years as head greenkeeper at Meldrum House Country Hotel & Golf Club near Aberdeen, 41-year-old Richard joined Banchory Golf Club, an 18-hole, par 69 course sited alongside the River Dee in Aberdeenshire, in June 2015.

Now, following the success of R9, Richard plans to regularly overseed with the perennial ryegrass, to gradually replace the bents – and the poa – and achieve immaculate greens that are playable in any weather and at all times of the year.