Travels with Terry (Equipment ideas)

Clip it and store it

The maintenance crew at the Golf Santander Club in Boadilla, Spain – Juan Jose Plaza Gallardo is the head greenkeeper and Estanislao Rubio Urquijo is the managing director – uses grass catchers on the mowers when cutting the bentgrass fairways. The equipment operators deposit the grass clippings in hard-plastic storage bins positioned adjacent to the cart paths throughout the 18-hole course. Laborers empty the bins when they’re filled to capacity.

The storage bins measure 4 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet. They have 3/8-inch-diameter holes drilled in the bottoms on 6-inch centers so any excessive moisture from the clippings, rainfall or irrigation will drain. The crew installed decorative fencing – 2-inch-by-10-inch boards mounted on 6-inch-by-6-inch posts stabilized in concrete – on three sides of the bins to conceal them.

The bins cost about $100 each, and the wooden fencing material costs about $125. About seven hours of labor is needed to drill the drain holes in the bottom of the bins and build the decorative fencing.

Ride along

At the Pacific Dunes Course at Bandon (Ore.) Dunes Golf Resort, the greenkeepers – under the direction of Ken Nice, director of agronomy, and Jeff Sutherland, golf course superintendent – walk the fairways with buckets and a bunker rake mounted on specialty pull carts. The Riksha Model R-1000 pull carts were free from the golf shop because they had broken frames and straps. The maintenance department repaired them, and they’ve been recycled for daily use.

Damon Lewis, a former staff member, came up with the idea of equipping each Riksha with two or three plastic buckets and a wooden bunker rake.

Divots are placed in one 5-gallon bucket, and a soil-and-fine-fescue-seed mixture is carried in another 5-gallon bucket. Crew members carry a smaller bucket for filling the divots with a soil/seed mixture and a larger one to collect the old divots.

The Riksha pull carts initially cost about $117. The plastic buckets were free – they’re recycled grass-seed buckets or from the clubhouse kitchen. It took one to two hours to repair each used cart and mount the buckets.

Terry Buchen, CGCS, MG, is president of Golf Agronomy International. He’s a 38-year, life member of the GCSAA. He can be reached at terrybuchen@earthlink.net.