If you haven’t seen the first blog on all the work that’s been done by my Syngenta colleague Alex in the Nordic countries, over the past few seasons, catch up here.
Forgive my free hand pins on the 3 trial sites above! But these are (meant to be) the locations of this years trials.
A good spread but I’d like to add a site or two in Scotland and Ireland next season, get in touch if you are interested in supporting!
Running on greens from early spring right through the growing season.
The core concept is to build up the different layers of technology available to offer the best possible turf health benefits on a course.
The Program
Building blocks of the turf health program 2025, applied as a tank mix every 2 weeks:
Applied in 400L water via red XC04 nozzles for optimum coverage.
- Qualibra wetting agent – 10L/ha
- Ryder – 0.5L/ha
- Hicure – 10L/ha (April and October to target cool periods)
- Primo Maxx II – (course ‘house rate’ used over growing season)
- New Biostimulant 1 – 3L/ha (May – September to target periods peak growth and mowing stress)
- New Biostimulant 2 – 1.5L/ha (June – August to target periods of light stress)
The program is applied to all 18 greens of each course.
To compare the effect against just standard ‘greenkeeper practice’ for each site all maintenance activities remain the same, but when the trial spray is made an area of the greens is covered – as in the image below to offer an untreated control.
Thanks for the great images during application Keith! ^^
Each of of the sites, as with each of you reading this, is facing specific challenges.
Be that agronomic, budgetary or labour supply.
So it’s been great to see the benefits already being offered even though the season has not long begun!
The hope is as the season goes on and the Primo and further Biostimulant applications are made we see further gains made.
Darwen like many, has seen record low rainfall for the region this Spring, and still struggling for temperatures to recover from winter losses from, high rainfall levels at the end of 2025, disease pressure and high levels of play.
1st from the 14th April,
2nd – 15th May,
3rd & 4th – 26th May,
Gog Magog is a dry site at the best of times, being perched atop a chalky hill outside Cambridge. It’s close to where I’m based so it’s ideal for me to drop in and see the progress.
1st & 2nd – 9th April,
3rd – 23rd May,
4th – 27th May
North Hants had a good amount of aeration to recover from in the spring as can be see in the early images.
1st & 2nd – 13th May
3rd – 28th May
The trials look great so far, but we are still very early in the season.
It’s important that we are improving turf quality and performance, but I’m hopeful that the stress control in the program throughout the season will show benefits if disease sneaks into the game at some point also.
I’m looking forward to visiting the sites soon to judge for myself and take some readings.
