Top Dressing

Q. Why do you top dress, how often, and what does it consist of?

A. Top dressing is a way of smoothing the surface and helps make the greens true. Over a period of time it helps improve the quality of the topsoil. There are many types of top dressing and different ones suit different courses. It all depends what the greens were built out of. The top dressing used here up until 2010 was sand and a small percentage of fensoil. This has now been changed to a pure sand as the organic material levels are high enough already. This now enables us, with the help of our new spin top dresser shown below, to top dress lightly once a fornight in consideraly less time than that taken with our old dresser.

Q. Why is it some times the greens are topdressed after spiking and not other times? Surely it helps smooth the surface?

A. This depends on what type of spiking was carried out. If it is hollow tining, where a core of soil is removed then it is good practice to work some dressing down into the holes. When using solid tines however, the soil around the hole is displaced and has to be allowed to settle back. If the hole were filled this would not happen and the ground would remain compacted.