The resourcefulness and positivity of head greenkeeper, John Watson, and his team of three, at the parkland course of Downside GC, Dundee, saw them through a tough \u2018stop-start\u2019 winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can only worry about what you can control,\u201d said John Watson, brushing aside that a relentless combination of ice and 12 weeks\u2019 snow cover, played havoc with well laid plans for the first quarter of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, John Watson\u2019s purchase of two machines from local dealer, Fairways GM at Kinross, last November, helped him make the best of any weather windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first was a Wiedenmann Super 500, 3-in-1 high dump, sweeper collector, which is famed for being able to keep working in frosty conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been permanently attached to a hydrostatic tractor; it works a treat on that, so smooth. Primarily, it was for leaves and then of course, rough management. It picked huge amounts of leaves right away, and then a few storms meant we virtually had to start again. Leaves are vacuum packed nice and tightly. We high dump them into one of our 5 tonne trailers. We\u2019ve taken photos of what it does and quite honestly, it\u2019s so good, people think we\u2019ve used Photoshop,\u201d continued John.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second machine is the Maredo MT200 Flex Verticutter, supplied via GroundPro to Fairways GM and indeed, to all Wiedenmann UK dealers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Maredo has three mechanically driven heads which follow contours individually and can give either a light groom or verticut, or a deep scarify, down to 6-8 mm, particularly appropriate to tees and greens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI chose the Maredo for its manoeuvrability. It\u2019s on a three point linkage behind the tractor so when it comes to doing tees or greens, it\u2019s just a case of pulling up a lever. They are light, quick and easy to position in the tightest of spots. What I like is they throw the organic matter and debris behind the machine so there is no running over. I was also conscious if you hit a stone, it wasn\u2019t airborne, so for me it surpassed the H&S requirements and it worked better for us than others demonstrated Just in the last few weeks have we been out starting on the practice putting greens ridding them of moss down to about 8 mm. It\u2019s neat and thorough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John\u2019s ethos is to work smartly and productively, maximising output with all four of his team involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are limited by just three tractors when we work in tandem, but when we cut and collect the rough, we have one tractor running back and forward with the trailers, taking them to drop off points around the course, deploying the Super 500 constantly with no wasted journeys back and forward to base. Same principles with the Maredos; when we are scarifying, we use our blower to gather, the Super 500 to collect and trailers positioned for high dumping. None of this is rocket science but organise well and you make the most of a good day,\u201d continued John Watson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mike Lindsay, Fairways GM\u2019s Area Manager said: \u201cThe Super 500 and Maredos will work well together. John had been keen to add them to his machinery feet for some time and now they are doing exactly what he\u2019d planned.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The resourcefulness and positivity of head greenkeeper, John Watson, and his team of three, at the parkland course of Downside GC, Dundee, saw them through a tough \u2018stop-start\u2019 winter. \u201cYou can only worry about what you can control,\u201d said John Watson, brushing aside that a relentless combination of ice and 12 weeks\u2019 snow cover, played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiedenmann.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}