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