Robert Patterson, course manager at Royal Abernain Golf Club in Scotland, explains how a John Deere GPS track sprayer improved spray accuracy and cut costs on his course. The system lets him apply chemicals more precisely, reducing waste and saving money on inputs while maintaining better turf quality.
I'm Robert Patterson, coes manager at Royal Abernain Golf Club in the north east of Scotland. I've been here for 23 years and in 2019 we purchased the John Deere GPS track sprayer. One of the main reasons that the new GPS sprayer appeals to us is the overall accuracy of the machine. We were relying on phone markers when we sprayed greens approaches and fairways especially. The site here at Royal Abernain is a windy site and we get very few days where we don't have any wind. So, dropping foam down to mark your spray line is okay but we tended to find that the foam would land somewhere else. So, when we started to use and map out the course and use the GPS we found that we were so much more accurate, almost down to 2 centimetres accurate and what that gave us was probably a 12 % saving on spray and fairways when originally we were maybe using 2 ,000 litres of volume to spray 9 hectares each application we were knocking at back to about 1750 litres per application. These savings were difficult to calculate in the first year but we've now had a sprayer for two years and we've now got lots of data that we can actually back up the savings that we're making. The auto track system is very very.
Useful for accuracy more than anything.
We mapped out the all areas of the golf course and set an A to B track on greens especially on fairways. There's a curved track, there's a diagonal track and the accuracy on any of the tracks that you pick is exactly the same.
Obviously some of our fairways are not.
In a straight line and the turn and our dog legs so we have a curved track on some of them that makes accuracy almost 100%. The 4240 display panel gives us huge information feedback when we're actually using the sprayer. The operator is aware of everything that's actually going on without him having to actually turn round and see what's going on behind him. The individual nozzle control allows us to spray the exact pattern of each green, T, fairway or area of the golf course that we're spraying. A great example of the individual nozzle control is when we spray iron products. We found with the previous sprayer that we ended up with blocks and straight lines in the corners of the greens. Now when we spray we actually spray the actual shape on the size of.
The green without any overlaps over the edges.
Eliminating these lines and having to spray on the green shape as it is is much more pleasing to the eye.
And to the golfer.
The rate controller on the machine allows us to select one of three preset rates for foliar's, normal products or soil applied products. It doesn't really matter how quickly or slowly you go with the machine because the rate controller will control how much product is put out and applied. We used to record data in a spray book but now as the sprayer.
Machine is on the golf course the.
Data is updated immediately. We can track the machine all the way around the golf course. It's all downloaded then onto apps on my phone, on an iPad or on my PC.
The information is readily available through John Deere Link and the operation centre wherever you are. I think in summary purchasing the GPS machine has made a huge difference to me and my staff over the last two years. The site we are on is very exposed and one of the big issues we have is the wind. We've now got a situation where we can almost go out in darkness and start to spray areas of the golf course generally in this part of the world when it doesn't really get up until the tide starts moving and by then it's too late to go out and spray so that's a major advantage test to do that and whether it be first thing in the morning or even late in the evening we can go out when the daylight is falling. There's also the benefit that there's no golfers out there at that time of day either. The accuracy of the machine is paramount and key to what we are trying to achieve here with environmental issues, saving money, saving product and much more user friendly for the operator and for the golf club on the area around about us.
Due to the increased accuracy of the.
Machine especially when spraying fairways we've found that previously we were using about 2000 litres of volume for the 9 hectares.
That we have of fairways at the golf club.
We've now knocked that back to about 7 ,950 litres which equates to about 12 % saving on each application. We spray fairways at least 7 -8 times a year and a 12 % saving on volume is a big percentage. It's less diesel. It's less operator stress. So there's savings in various areas of the operation that we do and that's just one area of the golf course. There's savings to be made on other areas, greens, tees, fairways and multiply that by the fact that we have two golf courses here. So the savings over a period of five years can be quite considerable.
The change to GPS spraying has improved our performance hugely in all areas of how we manage our golf course. We spray a lot and this has allowed us to be much, much more accurate. The technology allows the operator to concentrate.
On what they're actually doing.
The information that we're fed back is clear and very accurate. Would I recommend this type of technology to any golf club? Absolutely. This is the way forward and I think most golf clubs should look to go down this road as if they want to improve their overall performance and applications of any chemicals.
