General course work

We've been very busy working away maintaining all surfaces on the golf course, all surfaces are bring regularly mown and are looking very well.   The feedback we've had this season has been very positive with visitors and members alike they all seem to be happy with course presentation and the changes we under took.  We are still working away on the bunkers trying to keep them as stone and weed free as possible. 

The areas of new construction that were seeded are really starting to thicken up.  We have already rolled them and we will look to start cutting them.  A few of new tee banks have really jumped and have a few weeds poking through so we will get these strimmed down.  Please still treat these areas as GUR.

Our greens roller is currently waiting on parts coming this has been down since Wednesday but we hope to have this back up and running at the start of the week.  In mean time we have been double cutting the greens to maintain green speed. 

We plan to give the greens a verticut this week to remove some organic matter and will look to topdress again in the next few weeks.

Course work

We gave all the greens (except 14) a top dress last week, we went on fairly light so this brushed in pretty much straight away.  We never dressed 14 as the green was drying out and the sand would have stressed it out.  My irrigation system was down and we wouldn't have been able to keep it moist.  We got it the irrigation sorted on Thursday but that was too close to weekend to dress.  We got the 14th dressed to day.  As well as top dressing we also spiked, over seeded and put out a soil improver.  This had the extra work as the greens turf is new and has not got the moisture or nutrient holding capacity it of the other greens.

We have also liquid fed the greens and added in a growth regulator, iron and wetting agent.  The new 14th green got a granular as this will not so readily wash through with rain.

Stone picking

We have had team Niblick in for a few days this week to give us a hand stone picking/raking the 6th fairway.  It's quite a mind numbing job but the guys have done really well and it's a lot cleaner of stones than before.  We still have a a few piles to pick up and we will give it an another over seed to start thickening up some of the thinner areas.

Top dress

The big greens have been top dressed today.  The sand has brushed in nicely.

Seniors open

6th fairway and seed

We've started to gradually bring down the height off the turf on the new 6th fairway,  this will take a few weeks as we don't want it to thin out too much.   We cut it at 22 mm today and it took that cut no problem.  The areas that where newly seeded 2 weeks ago have seen some growth in the last week and are now starting to get a green haze.  The areas that were seeded slightly earlier (e.g. back off the 17th green) are really starting to fill out now and give grass coverage.

Greens

The big course greens have been top dressed (10 ton of medium course sand) and had a liquid feed applied.   We sarel rolled the greens in 2 directions dressed on top and then went over with the sarel rollers again with the drag mat behind.   We then worked the sand in with vibrating brushes and the tru turf roller.

They had 30 litres of 25-0-0 which works out about 9.7 kg-n/h, this was tank mixed with 20 litres iron (strength and colour), 0.4 litres of primo max (growth regulator) and salute (stands the plant up).

The wee greens have also been top dressed (5 ton of medium course sand) they then had a 4-0-8 fertiliser applied.