Golf Course Turf Grass, Shifting Goal Post

Golf Course Turf Grass Part 2

Our initial trail.

The amended soil.

The amended soil.

Just came back from my vacation in Vietnam and now back to work. We are shifting our goal post. Our initial Goal is to find out if AgroSol works for Turf and after a couple of weeks, we are finalizing an order of AgroSol for a bigger trial. We are just waiting for the official documentations.

In the mean time, am shifting from "if it works" to optimization. From the initial concentration, 1:200, 1:400 & 1:600, I find that 1:600 works better. This is definitely a run off from our normal perception that "more is always better"

My last spraying about 14 days ago, was done while drizzling. So I guess this is a good time to change the concentration.



Let this run for 28 days and check back on the results. Stay tuned.

#Agrosol #Organic #Natural #BeeFriendly #PurePlantEnergy
Tested in Malaysia for #AvocadoFriendly #GrapeFriendly #DurianFriendly#MangoFriendly #RockmelonFriendly #PapayaFriendly #TurfFriendly #FigFriendly#BlueButterFlyPeaFriendly #BananaFriendly #ChilliFriendly

Golf Course Turf Grass

Hotel Bangi-Putrajaya

Turf Repairing in progress

Let's go have a round of Golf!
Did a presentation with the Course management people and started a trial for Turf at Bangi Golf Course Resort on the 4th October 2017. Went around the course to orientate myself with the Assistant Course Superintendent. A big thank you. I understand a little more as Turf to a layman like me is weeds.

I found out that Turf needs to be repaired and lots of efforts and steps are taken to to that. Let along using machines that I had not encountered before.

Turf is practically planted in sand and I was made to understand that there is a sub soil level, which include drainage as well. In-fact layers had to be prepared one by one.

There are also different Turf for different area, like greens, fairways, putting & etc. Name of the turf also sounds so alien to me, as I normally refer them as weeds or grass.


As I had never planted grass before, and had a long though on how to go about this.

Irregular Turf.

I can out with an idea of making a marked area and do it at a different concentration. After a couple of trails with other plants in Malaysia, I have a hunch that we don't require a high concentration as stated by our principle, or was it that I calculate wrongly...

This is what I came up with. Bought some PVC
pipes and raffles string. I guess yellow is easier to see. We did this in the nursery in 3 sections. Concentration from 1:200 to 1:600. I then sprinkle in some compost, our Richfield, formulation with Micorriza and Super Nano Gel.

Took me about 2 horse to complete. We were recommended to apply AgroSol either in the morning or evening. Most of the time all my trials, my application time is away from the recommended time, as by the time I finished preparing, it's most probably late morning or afternoon.

I left, and schedule my next schedule in 14 days' time.

Note the Turf is practically growing on sand.

In the mean time I was reckoning, what else can we do for Golf course? I then took time to find out why do they need to grow Turf on sand, which is a poor growing media. It needs lots of nutrients and water to support the Turf. Due to continuous irrigation, we need to manage fungus disease.  I found out that Turf is practically growing in a hydroponic method, because it need to drain off water from the course way. Easier to walk for the golfer with soil/ mud sticking onto their shoes.

Green is turf, Red is root zone and Blue is sand.
On the right, we insert in a layer of BioRichar

Can we make the Golf course more green as in less chemical? Can we reduce the workforce required? After discussing with the management, they came up wit a magic number, 30%. If we can have a saving of 30%, yes , they can explore working with us.

After corresponding with the Assistant Superintendent. I proposed that we work with 2 approach. On the top we treat the turf with our Pure Plant Energy, AroSol. On the bottom we try to amend the sand (Soil). Our Richfield is a good candidate. Germany technology, the Mycorriza promotes root growth, right in the root zone. Porosity and Moisture retention is great. Rich with organic matter, inoculated with good effective microbes shall manifest the growth of the EM. Super Nano gel absorb water, retain and release slowly shall greatly reduce irrigation and energy cost. Introducing a thin layer of say 10 to 20 mm in the root zone should have very good long term effect. Hope this shall help us reach our magic figure. Decided to incorporate this on my next visit.

23rd October. As anticipated, the 1:600 shows better performance.

This is the first time I used an auguring tool of this sort. I had initially scheduled half a day for this task. With this tool, it was a breeze and managed to complete in a very short time. But still, age had caught up with me. Needed plenty of rest in between.

I aimed for the root zone depth, replaced some sand with Richfield. 4 holes per slot.

My visit today 3rd November . Check out my video. The round patch is visible. It is effective

The 200, note the round patches.

The 400, note the round patches.

The 600, note the round patches.

Closer up of the 600.

My visit today, it's drizzling and not suitable for spray AgroSol. Shall come back and continue the trial later part of the month. I personally is very excited as am getting remarkable improvements in 28 days.

Looking forward to optimize further, maybe with a higher range of 1:500, 1:700 and 1:900.

Well, can only do this after my vacation. Stay tune.



AgroSol Grapes results in Malaysia
#Agrosol #Organic #Natural #BeeFriendly 
Tested in Malaysia for #AvocadoFriendly #GrapeFriendly #DurianFriendly #MangoFriendly #RockmelonFriendly #PapayaFriendly
 #TurfFriendly #FigFriendly

Rescuing Our Soursop, Annona Muricata.

Our 1st batch of Soursop was planted back in April.

Propagating & Planting Soursop, Annona Muricata

Due to the raining, access road to that particular section was cut off. We had to wait for the bulldozer to come by and clear off the small land slide.

 Even with the bulldozer clearing that section, the surface is still soft & muddy. I went down to inspect the Soursop and found that they had been over ran with weeds as it's already about 5 months since we planted.

We managed to organize a recuse mission. As it had just rained the previous night, we have to park our truck about 0.8 km away and trek down to that section. Trekking down is easy, but bringing all our stuff is a bit of a handful.We then have to cross a small river before we reach that section.

We use parang (machetes) to slash off the weed and to locate the planted soursop. It wasn't too difficult as we had marked the plants with a small pole, covered with the discarded polybags. Those with fallen markers are the difficult to ones to locate. Thank goodness that I guess we only lost maybe less than 5 plants. There are also a couple of agarwood trees that we planted on the slope side. On the river side there are a couple of Berangan banana trees.

It took us about half a day to complete our task.

Trekking back is challenging as it's up hill.

We came back a couple of days later to do weed management with herbicide.

Going off for my break and shall check back next month. Stay tune for update.

Repairing Nursery.

The Nursery had broken down and over ran with weeds after I came back to our little farm. Was away for about 3 months. It was erected partially with wood and bamboo. The bamboo had decayed and fell down. Our nursery was built in 3 stages, over a period of time. It started out very small and was extended. The last stage was the largest as we were seeding Gaharu (Agarwood).

Lots of the seedlings had also died due to the drought. With unprotected sun light, the seedlings just couldn't withstand.

Had managed to transfer all the surviving seedlings to ploy bags. With that cleared, I started to dismantle the shade first. Had to do it carefully as I hope to reuse them.

Dismantled and lay it on the ground so that I can roll it for storage. Have to use our field ladder as the height was above my head. Had a couple of falls as the ground was uneven and soft due to the rain. The shade gets easily hooked to nails, wood splints and etc. At times I had to cut out a section to dislodge it. Yet at the same time had to try to keep them in a long piece. If it's too short, then it's difficult to reuse.

 Saw off the horizontal frame and dismantle the nursery to half size.

Strengthen the vertical pole with "ram" earth. Secured the horizontal pole. As the wood tend to crack at the edge, I used wire to tie them up.

 Once I got the poles secured, I instal back the shade. I managed to reuse most of the material and the only 'new' material that I bought was the raffia string. I use the raffia string to secure the shade netting.

After completing the half size nursery, I found that I need to create a shade for the Gaharu / Agarwood seedlings too. So put up another section.

Managed to complete today, and had some time to spare. As I still had the energy, I cleared off a small section and did some cuttings from our lime tree. Trying to propagate more lime plants. The weather forecast indicates high chances of rain for the next 10 days.
I usually check the weather forecast everyday via weather-forecast.com . I find this good as it does give a 10 days forecast. Also there is a weather station very near to our farm.

Shall be busy tomorrow, gathering our produce and sending them down to the city the next day. On 21st Aug, my leave starts and shall be away for the next 9 days. Hopefully when I'm back, I can see the lime cutting propagate.
Only left with clearing off the weeds and our refurbished nursery shall be fully operational.

Rubber Trees, Parcel 1

Great news, some of our rubber trees in Parcel 1 are starting to flower. This is a good sign as it shows the trees are starting to mature. Had not check how many trees are starting to bear flowers, but am sure the rest shall follow sooner or later. Shall keep track on how long before the seeds starts to develop and drop.

This shall be a source of income as I had already found market to supply seeds to rubber tree nursery.

Visited our biggest tree in Parcel 1, this is one of the tree planted by our partner. It measures 680 mm diameter at 300 mm above ground. Wishing that all our trees reach this measurement. This tree had not show signs of flowering yet, as these were planted from seeds.

Our phase 1 trees have reached up to 280 mm diameter. Our target is to have the trunk reaching 400 ~ 450 mm before we start to tap. Still holding to our targeted tapping date end of year 2013.

We are maintaining the Parcel 1 with care. Keeping it clean from weeds and fertilizing regularly with compound and organic fertilizer. We are also making plan to phase out the banana trees. Shall be using EM to boost up the growth.



We are replacing the banana trees with papaya as there are smaller and shorter compared to banana. Hence not competing for sunlight.

We still have some small area of land in Parcel 1, mostly fringe and high gradient slope, that had not been planted. Started to clear these area, hopeful we can get it ready before the rainy season. Planning to diversify from rubber trees for these small areas as the market price for rubber is rather low at the moment.
A check on today on Lembaga Getah Sabah
Latex : RM 6.75
Sheet Grade I: RM 3.75
Sheet Grade II:RM 3.35 
Cuplump Grade I: RM 3.30 
Cuplump Grade II: RM 2.90 
Scrap : RM 1.35
For: 23 August 2012
With such low price, profitability shall definitely be affected. World economy slow down contributed to the decline of rubber prices. Outlook is still good on the long term. Anticipating market to pickup in year 2013.

We are looking at fruit trees like Avocado, Jackfruits, Lime, Papaya and others. Also researching on Agarwood for the high gradient slope. We had also initiated our Project Free Range Village Chicken. Shall also be looking at Bees keeping once flowering of the rubber had been fully established. Hopefully with these diversification, we should be more profitable.

Parcel 1, 2 & 3 Weed Management

May, June and July were very hectic. We had finally finished off the weed management for Parcel 1, 2 & 3. Thanks to our new high pressure pump, we manage to do it at a shorter time. It was a very challenging run as we missed the previous weed management back in March. The weeds had grown too long and access were difficult. We started off with Parcel 3, smallest, then Parcel 2 and lastly the biggest Parcel 3. Am really glad that we have cleared this. We still need to finish off the fertilization program.

What we had done is that we used the high pressure pump to do a initial run, then followed by a manual run with knack pack  sprayer. This is to do up the missed and out of reached area (due to limited length of hose). We had also switch to another brand of herbicide and hope that it shall have better results. We had added a used tire to absorb the vibration of the pump, a very helpful suggestion made by our partner. We are more familiar with the pump operation now.

 

Testing this now.

The pump being higher pressure (adjustable), it can penetrate the long grass batter. 

Looking forward to the next weed management run, which starts in September.

Were using these.