TDR100 Glenn KirbyGlenn Kirby used the FieldScout TDR100 Soil Moisture Meter in his previous role as Assistant Courses Manager at The London Golf Club. Glenn comments that the two TDR100s were “originally purchased to help be more efficient in our watering practices but found that moisture content was very indicative of organic matter content and believe long term it would help us evaluate and manage how we deal with Organic Matter build up”.

From a young age Glenn has been involved in sportsturf starting in Cricket pitch maintenance and with education and time has evolved to Golf Course maintenance. Golf seemed to offer much more job variety and career progression and in November 2012 Glenn started the position of Course Manager at Hockley Golf Club in Hampshire on the outskirts of Winchester. Hockley has ambitious plans to develop the course to fulfil its full potential and aspires to be considered amongst the very best Downland Courses in the South of England. Hockley takes independent advice from Charles Henderson at Sports Agronomy Services and their centenary in 2014 is a real focus for the club to be in its very best condition.

In Glenn’s new role at Hockley “the TDR100 was one of the first things on my shopping list as I know just how quickly it will enable me to evaluate my water needs and quickly highlight issues before they become obvious to the golfer”. The TDR100 is “very easy to use and has allowed me to be ahead of the game with watering”. Through using the TDR100 Glenn “quickly learnt the areas of greens that would dry out first and which areas would take longer. This gave me confidence to hold back on over head irrigation and rely on hand watering much more”. Glenn believes with increased hand watering it is important to take the subjectivity out of the task and the TDR100 “enabled me to use multiple people for watering and know they were all watering to the same standard. I could easily ask any member of my team to water areas below 15% VWC and leave them if it was above”.

Daily spot checks in key indicative areas give Glenn a clear indication of where his greens are in their drying cycle. If this highlighted that watering was necessary then the TDR100 is used during the hand watering process to ensure a consistent surface. In the first instance an experienced team member will use the TDR100 to evaluate over head irrigation requirements but once hand watering has commenced usually the least experienced team member will take it to ensure consistency.

The next product on Glenn’s wish list from EnviroMonitors is a Weather Station with GPRS capability. Hockley is a large site and the bulk of it is highly elevated which is a good distance from the greenkeeping compound. Glenn is pleased that “this weather station technology will allow us to monitor the weather on the main portion of our course from any internet enabled device, which should prove very useful”. Other products Glenn can see being useful are infiltration meters and compaction meters to help determine when and how to optimise Hockley’s aeration program.

Glenn has found “EnviroMonitors are always very helpful and easy to work with and also put me in touch with other end users to see how the TDR100 has worked for them. The best thing about having measurement tools available is knowing where you are at rather than guessing or even worse assuming!”.