Fescue and Bent go together like Cheese and Onion, they compliment each other well, Bent grass gives the sward a strong back bone during winter when fine fescues enhance all aspects of playability, Annual Meadow Grass counts are lower than ever this year thanks to sand applications and precise moisture management so there has never been a better time to sew in some bent grass to compete with this.
These new finer bents originate from New Zealand, the top performing cultivar according to the seed houses is called ‘Arrowtown’, we have sewn this alongside a ‘Manor’ cultivar at 4g per m2. You can see how fine the seed is below, it is like a powder:
The seed is sewn in tiny dimples and can be seen germinating in the morning dews around 10 days later, it will then blend in and become more apparent coming in to the winter months.
Our program of Fescue seeding will continue in October on greens after the Grand Match, realistically we will always have Poa, Rye and Yorkshire fog in our greens unless we treat them chemically but its a case of making use of what we have, our greens perform very well so we will not be treating them chemically at the moment. We can keep refining and pushing better grasses in as a chemical treatment would be substantially aggressive and it would take the greens 2-3 years to recover fully.
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