12th pond and burn

Below are two photos, one before and after burn was dug and cleaned, also attached is a picture of the pond that's has been cleaned out and slightly reshaped.

Mobile blogging

I've got my iPhone set up for the blog now so there will a lot more updates in future!

High winds

This was the only real damage from the high winds we have had in the last month on the golf course, although we have been busy up the lodges as there is a few trees to cut tidy up.

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.