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.