Historical construction question

[Steve Curry]

I scanned and sent to my green committee page 103 of The Parks of Musselburgh which has pictures of the construction of Shuttle Meadow and one member asked what is in the bags on the wagons??

Cheers,
Steve

[Bill_McBride]

Seed, lots of seed!

[Steve Curry]

Hi Bill,

My thought was manure.

Thanks,
Steve

[Bill_McBride]

I'd have thought the manure in those days would come in bulk!

[Niall C]

I think you'll find, if you look closely at those photos, that the "manure production units" are actually in front of the carts

[Steve Curry]

That looks like the bulk delivery of the day, but I am not sure.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Steve,
I'm going with peat moss.
Seems like that would be enough seed to plant Rhode Island, and I don't know of manure was so carefully dried and bagged back then.

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

Stolens.

[Steve Curry]

Hi Dick,

I thought of that also but wasn't sure if they would have bagged them?

Thanks,
Steve

[Ian Larson]

Yeah I would say it's burlap bags of stolens. Even to this day if you order a small order of stolons they come in burlap bags. And if it is stolons that picture below makes total sense if that was the stolon crew going down across the width of a fairway laying stolons.

[Bill_McBride]

Stolens.

"Stolons" defined:

http://landscaping.about.com/cs/lazylandscaping/g/stolon.htm

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

Bill;

Not a good definition for stolons as when used to propograte new fairway or greens.  The stolons and rhizomes they are speaking of are, however what they use to make the product we are speaking of here.

Back in the day (your time) some of the popular strains of bent grasses and bermudas were and still are not availabel as seed.

They used to harvest the sod from existing plots, wash it completely clean of all soil, then put it through a chopping device and bag it up (as in the pictures) and ship it all over the world.

I am having a senior moment as to the name of the firm in Chicago, but they were the largest supplier in North America.

I purchased stolons from them for a project we did in Manotick (near Ottawa) Ontario back in 1961

I think stolonizing fairways is still common when propogating new fairways in the southern USA

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

An article on stolonizing


http://turf.lib.msu.edu/1960s/1968/680316.pdf

[Lester George]

Could be fill material or manure.

Lester

[Bill_McBride]

.

[Alister Matheson]

They look like very hard workers !  GRAFTERS

This delivery must be their food rations for the week       lol

[Jim_Kennedy]

Steve,
Does the club have construction records, that might offer a clue.

[Steve Curry]

Hi Jim,

That is on my slate for the next fe weeks, before the product starts growing.

Best,
Steve