Gordon Johnson from Simola

perfect fairways and greens

Hello everyone,

This week’s newsletter I would like to dedicate to one of the true leaders in our golf course industry, Gordon Johnson from Simola. Gordon does the maintenance of the course at Simola and he is the kind of guy that is always eager to help where he can. Gordon’s latest breakthrough was the fight against Poa (Winter grass) on bent greens. He experimented with mixtures that are safe for bent grass and easy to apply by our course staff.

Just to explain his love for the golf maintenance industry, Gordon did a road trip to a lot of courses and gave each guy a 10 L mixture that he made up to try on their greens. We were in the fortunate position to be on the receiving end of one of these mixtures that I have tried and tested; I can say with great excitement that this works!

When I asked Gordon why he doesn’t sell this product his words to me were “no Charl, this is for the good of our industry”, truly someone I look up to and enjoy talking too.

I have attached a couple of pictures to show you how we apply this mix safely and also some pictures to show you the results we have had within 10 days of application of this mix.

Applying the mix with a “dabber”

The Poa plant dying within 10 days of application

The dark dots indicates where the poa plants have been treated with the mix that has a green dye in to prevent applying double the rates to one area

The applicator is a bottle with a sponge at the tip to “Dab” the poa plants


I believe we can win this battle against Poa by keeping to this program. The best way to get to the desired end product is to try and try again until you achieve what you set out to do.

Other interesting findings on the course must be this huge snail (Zebra snails) that fascinates me every time I see them, this must have been the granddaddy of them all that I got on the weekend.



Please be very careful when driving on the roads, make sure to drive around them or stop and take them off the road if you can, I have seen too many of them dead due to people driving over them.

Thanks for helping us in this regard.

Charl Blaauw
“SUP”

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