21/10/11

During a rain interrupted week we finally managed to get the osprey greens cored (3/8 tines), top dressed (LV20) and fed (TX10). Instead of picking up the cores we used a technique that Bob at crail uses, we verti cut the cores up and after a bit of fine tuning off our machine we managed to get the greens relatively clear, we then blew of the remaining debris. I've decided to use a smaller tine to core (small and often coring, rather than aggressive coring once a year) as it causes less disruption to golfers and in my opinion more beneficial to the greens both below and above the surface, also the holes will not be as open and disruptive as they have been in previous winters. It also rained the night after we dressed the greens, this has helped to wash in the topdressing.

Cores being cleared of the greens surface.

Greens being fed after topdressing.

9/10/11

We have cored the "wee piper" greens in the past week. We would normally blow the cores of the greens and collect but we tried a different approach this time. As the greens are sand based we let the cores dry out for 10-15 minutes, then went behind and switched the cores which broke them up and recycled the sand back into the holes, we then went behind and blew of the organic matter. This worked very well and we will carry on using this technique when it comes to coring the wee greens. We then overseeded the greens and fed with TX10 fertiliser, we had a break down with the top dresser but it has now been fixed so we will be looking to top dress this following week. The greens on the big course will be getting cored on week commencing Monday the 17th October.

Handful of cores before switching.

Handful of organic material after the sand has been switched out.

Switching the 8th of the wee course.

With the wet weather we have also been working on a few path areas that where cutting on up with traffic going over, we dug out new fresh paths and lined with tarmac plainings. Owen the pro has also been getting his hands dirty in the past couple of weeks and has started to build a stone wall dyke behind the 1st tee.

New path being dug out from 10th green to 12th fairway.

Owen and Steve working on the new dyke.

20/9/11

The inaugural Piperdam V's St.Mikes greenkeeper challenge, a "narrow" 6&5 victory for Piperdam



The trophy



7 days after coring




Core hole spacing and size

16th green being rolled

View from the telehandler whilst putting up driving range netting

13th greenside bunker after a deluge of rain

A sunny day!!!

20/9/11

Ive had a few lap top issues in the last little while so this has stopped me blogging. The last couple of months the weather has been very poor with heavy rain showers and no real long breaks in the weather when it has been dry. We have had to be quite selective with our cutting as to not make to much mess and not stress out the grass. The course has held up to the rain not to bad, with the greens becoming a little soft but they still have a full covering of grass and the ball is rolling out well. We mini cored, over seeded and top dressed the big greens at the end of July we has great resulted from that and they had pretty much recovered within a week.

The driving range netting has been completed now and the next project for the the practice area is to put in synthetic grass target greens and to install a practice bunker at the chipping green.

i will add a few pictures to let you see what has been happening the last wee while.

18/7/11

The weather has been some what unsettled recently with reasonably warm temperatures but a lot of rain! Our maintenance schedule has been carrying on as normal but the growth has really jumped thus the maintenance has been very intense. We had captains day a few weeks ago and we had a great run up too it with some really nice weather and the course came together very well.

The driving range has also had its first stage of jazzing up, with the installation of our new synthetic turf surface supplied by SGS. The surface reacts very similar to normal turf and will be a major tool for Owen Leslie (pro) with the golf academy he is in the process of setting up. The first tennis court is also due for completion in the next few weeks.

The grinders have also been busy, when we have not been able to get on the golf course because of the weather we have been grinding the greens, tees and fairway mower units.

20/6/11

The greens on both courses have been fed with nutri pro 12-0-11 granular feed, this contained iron and we got quite a reaction with foot prints it even showed up a few golfers who have been taking there golf trolleys over greens!!!!!!! They have lost there blackness after a few days and have got a nice colour now. We have been carrying on with our regular maintenance regime. The new synthetic tee surface at the driving range has been decided upon and we hope to have it installed very soon.

We have also managed to get to some of the smaller jobs taken care off we have edged all pop ups, gully pots, yardage markers and the drop zone mats at the first. A drop zone mat will be added at the 13th and we will also edge around the dropzone mat at 11.

Course set up on friday, the greens being rolled and the holes being changed.




The drop zone at the 1st being edged.



Reaction from the iron on the putting green, this discoloration was gone after 3 days.

10/6/11

We have tried two new products on the greens this week in a tank mix. The first product is the new version of osprey wetting agent called osprey active, the new osprey active has amino acids so unlike its predecessor this will help to produce chlorophyll which will increase in levels of photosynthesis to help with growth and the amino acids will also help the root structure. The second product is called stand up this basically makes the grass stand up so we can get a cleaner cut and will also aid in the removal of seed heads when cutting this will reduce bobble and increase green speed. The tees and approaches have also been taken down in height slightly this generally is giving a better finish.

We are still only cutting the greens with pedestrian mowers during week days and this is giving us a really nice finish and ball roll.




greens being sprayed

06/06/11

27/5/11

The weather hasn't been our friend in the last few weeks, we have had torrential rain, high winds and low temperatures, lets hope this improves. The only real damage with the wind on the golf side at Piperdam was the driving range netting, the whole right hand has blown loose, we're lucky the netting became unattached or we could have had much more major damage with the supports coming down!!

The 5th fairway has been fed, the turf that was put down 2 years ago just needs a little kick start to get going as there isn't a lot of nutrient in the soil because of the major soil movement before turfing. We also fed the rough on the right hand side of the fairway as it was seeded and again just needs a little hit to thicken it up.

The newly seeded areas have started to germinate and the seed has started to grow.

10th green

5th fairway being fed

Driving range damage

19/5/11

All the greens have been top dressed and fertilised again, with the dry weather we have had to keep irrigating the greens to wash in the fertiliser and topdressing. We have also put new sole plates and ground the pedestrian greens mowers so we get a nice clean cut. We have dug out the valve boxes at the 4th and 5th greens on the osprey course, the moles where getting in and filling them full of soil, so they where dug out, lined with fertiliser bags and gravel put in the base.


Valve box being lined.





Irrigating the 4th green on the osprey course

The 9th green on the wee course, footprints where people have walked over the green after fertilising

New sole plate being put on sole plate carrier.

9/5/11

All the greens over both courses have been over seeded and top dressed again. We cut, sarel rolled, over seeded, top dressed and then brushed in the dressing it took roughly a full day to carry this out. Weather wise it has been very dry with the occasional ground frost until the weekend past when we had 56mm of rain. This has been welcomed as it has softened the tees and fairways which where becoming very dry and hard. The bunkers have been flymod on both courses.

The tees have been fed on the big course and we will feed the approaches on the big course tomorrow, the wee course tees and approaches on the wee course will then be done.

We took delivery off our new zero turn last week as well this will make our cutting more efficient as the last one had a habit of breaking down! The new zero turn was supplied by Double A in cupar with the help of Gordon Rogers.

The greens being over seeded after sarel rolling with the top dresser waiting in the back ground.

New zero turn.

30/4/11

The sunny weather has continued in the last week, we have got the irrigation on at nights to keep the greens moist. The only rain we have had in the last few weeks was last saturday when we had 9mm rain because of this rain we never cut the greens last sunday as they where a bit to soft. There has also been a couple of over night frost which has slowed down the growth. We have carried on with our regular cutting regime. The tees, approaches and fairways where cut the opposite way at the start of the week to get some of the grass that had been folded down, we then cut the normal direction later in the week to get the stripe back again. Whatever spare time we have had we have been fine prepping the old bunkers and pond at the 2nd ready for overseeding. A couple of machines went down this week needing minor repairs, this has pushed a few jobs back until next week.

The big greens also had there first application of T-Thatch and Rocastem these are our liquid aeration products. We also sprayed the greens with primo maxx this is a growth regulator and will slow down the vertical growth and help to promote lateral shoot growth. We will be looking to give the greens another light top dress in the following week.

The old pond at the 2nd being prepped for seed.

22/4/11

The greens on the osprey course were top dressed and fed this week, we also fed the wee piper greens. We have also spot dressed a couple of areas on the greens to help smooth them out and give the grass something to grow into. The continuing dry weather has meant that we have had to irrigate the greens at night as to stop them drying out and to continue the growth, there was a slight problem on Friday afternoon when the suction pipe got blocked but i got into the burn and got it unblocked. We used the tru-turf for the first time this season this week and it will now come back into our weekly maintenance regime.

Clearing the suction pipe for the pump.

Fertilising greens.

The view looking back at the top dresser.

15/4/11

The course has been fully set up for the weekend. The bunkers and new turfed areas where flymod this week. Another job was to patch all the tees as there where quite a few divots out of them from the winter play. Our first application of wetting agent and seaweed has also been sprayed onto the greens, we have the greens down to 5mm and we will be looking to give the greens a top dress and granular feed next week to push the greens on with the mild weather we are having just now. The drainage line at the back of the 1st green has also been turfed this week.

Piperdam now have a pro that will be available for a variety of lessons, his name is Owen Leslie and he will be representing Piperdam on the Tartan Tour, please contact reception on 01382 581374 for more details.

1st tee after sand patching.

4/4/2011

It was a wet tale end to last week, we eased of the cutting as we would just have made a mess and stressed the grass out. As well as general tidying up jobs we changed the holes and raked the bunkers for the opening match and then Blair cut the greens over the weekend. Today we cut the greens with pedestrian mowers and took the height down slightly.

We also finished edging all of the bunkers on the big course. The valve box at the back of the 10th green was broken, we got a new box and dug a new one in. We had two students from elmwood college start there work experience today, it will be great to have a help out on the courses.

During and after pictures of valve box replacement.

Stripping out the edge of turf that had been edged at the 6th green.

25/3/11

With the mild weather we have got on with a lot of course work we have given all the tees, approaches and fairways cut, we have also changed all the holes and raked the bunkers for the weekend play.

The dead trees at 5 and 6 have been cut out, this tidies that area up. We also gave the osprey greens a light top dress this week and put some seed down, we still have core holes on the greens from October, this is because we core so late in the season we don't get the recovery before the growth stops, over the coming month or so we will be looking to dress the greens again. The pond at the second has been filled in, this only got filled today, so next week we will look to tidy the area up and mark GUR as required.

The last few loads to be levelled out at the 2nd pond.

Blair brushing in top dressing.

17/3/11

The new bridge we built has been put in at the 13th green side, we also started planting broom at the side of the 1st tee.

15/3/11

We had a wee bit of snow on Saturday but it was all gone by Sunday. The 1st green had 2 patches around the collar that had died back during the snow coverage, instead of leaving it and allowing it to come back when we had decent growth we decided to cut out the areas and returf. These areas will be in play for the start of the season. The list of work from the course focus group has just about been completed. I spoke to Grant Moir from the R&A and he confirmed that we can use the tiger tees on 6 and 17 for selected competitions we just have to make the golfers aware the tees will be at the longer distance. We also had a 3 small patches of disease on the putting green and 12th green, we have plugged these areas to the side of the green.

Lifting the damaged turf on the 1st collar.



One of the plugs on 12.

7/3/11

The greens got another cut/roll on Friday, the holes where changed and the bunkers where raked for the weekend. We got our first cut of the tees on the big course this week and have also marked the o.b. on 2,3,4 & 5. We also began some drainage work in between the 15th & 16th fairways.

Gary cutting the 10th green in the distance.



Blair cutting the tees.



Trying to catch the water on the maintenance track between 15 & 16.



If the decent weather continues i hope to start cutting the fairways and keep working on the list of work from the focus group.