23/9/10

Its been a frustrating week at piperdam with the weather being very wet, this has stopped us cutting fairways and rough, we will hopefully get onto these areas on fri. The tees, approaches and bunkers have all been maintained as normal. We have also managed to keep the greens cut and rolled. We have also sarel rolled the greens twice this week (mon & thurs) this will keep the surface open and keep air circulating.

The greens at piperdam are quite slow draining so we verti drain them once a season (november) down to 12 inches, we have found this has helped but it is very hard to get sand down into the holes. Thus we started sand plugging on the greens at the start of the season, this involves taking the plug that you take out when you change holes and breaking of the bottom 9-10 inches of soil off, this is hard packed and doesn't allow any water percolation or root development. We then fill the old hole cup with pure sand and put the top 2-3 inches of plug into the old hole cup. We have to do this to create natural soak aways through the greens, we don't have to worry about the plugs drying up because we have a lot of thatch which keeps it moist. Also we have a regular wetting agent programme through the season that will stop the plugs drying out. This has worked very well and has made a significant difference to the greens. We change holes 2-3 times during the cutting season so we are adding a lot of sand through the profile during the season.

I have also had some meetings with Graeme Webster the golf course architect that designed the wee course, we have put plans together to look at bunkers and drainage on the big course, we hope to start the works after the rearranged mens open on the 17th oct.