Fairway Vertidraining

We have started vertidraining the fairways with 18mm solid tynes to try and break up the hardpan under the surface. At the moment we are concentrating on the low areas on fairways that caused us problems last year with ponding for long periods of time after we received heavy rain early last year.

We have had a report done on our drainage issues in these areas by NZSTI and one of the recommendations in that report was to try and shatter the layer of  heavy, silty loam that sits on top of the sand profile. Our worst layer is on the 17th fairway which is more than 300mm thick in places and vertidraining will only punch down to about 250mm deep. I am hoping that we have some shattering affect that will crack through the layer in places and give us better water infiltration when we do get heavy rain. At least we will have a lot more air space in the soil profile that will hold more moisture when it does rain and hopefully get it away from the surface.

At the moment we have vertidrained the low areas on the 8th, 9th &17th fairways 3 times and increased the tyne depth 25 mm each time because the ground is so hard and the machine can't cope with full depth straight away. We are now at 175mm deep and will probably need to tyne these areas at least 3 more times before we are at our maximum depth. When we have completed these areas we will start on all fairways before winter hits. Most of our fairway drain fairly well because we don't have many areas with thick layers of silty loam so these won't need to be treated so severely and to such a depth. We should be able to easily punch holes down to 150-175mm without much problem as long as we avoid shallow pipework and cable which is always a possibility.

vertidrain with 18mm solid tyned

vertidrain holes in one of the hardpan areas on 17th fairway