April Greens Report
April Greens Report
As we creep into May we leave behind a month we are glad to see the back of. Although the course is slowly drying out and becoming more accessible with machinery, there remains extremely wet areas around the course. April brought with it 85mm of rain along with some cooler temperatures. These conditions have put us back a few weeks on where we would like the course to be, but we can’t do much about the weather! Hopefully now we have turned a corner with the weather. The Greens have held up very well considering how wet it has been which is a big positive.
We are now slowly getting into our regular cutting regime with tees, surrounds and approaches cut twice a week. Semi rough all cut once over each week and greens every other day at present but will soon be every day when ground temperatures rise, and we see more growth. With us currently being short staffed we have had to reduce moving holes to once a week. In normal circumstances we would usually move the holes at least twice a week at this time of year. Moving holes can take 3-4 hours. As many of you will know we took delivery of the new fairway mower which had been on order for around 2 years. Since it has arrived it has been out on the course most hours of the day. We have found fairways have taken a lot of work to get them something like. As well as the wet conditions, the milder winter has meant that there has been steady growth throughout the winter months resulting in much more grass on the fairways and rough this spring. The fairways also lay with the direction of foot traffic, this has meant we have had to brush fairways with the tractor mounted brush as regularly as we can to reduce the knap therefore receiving a cleaner cut. The club have purchased a tractor mounted trailed Lastec rotary mower. This mower is used for cutting our semi rough. We have found this has saved us nearly half the time it usually took to cut rough, saving us valuable time. This has certainly exceeded our expectations of what we expected. Strimming and flymowing areas on the course continue pretty much daily at the moment.
The beginning of April saw us start our greens maintenance week. The poor forecast for the week along with a staff shortage and only 4 days to complete the work due to the bank holiday Monday brought a last moment change of plans. The original plan was to hollow core the greens, but with already very wet conditions and more rain forecast this was decided against. Coring the greens in such conditions with very little time would have been unviable. Instead, we continued with the other operations we had planned that week which we knew we could get done before the weather turned. Luckily Tuesday was a good day weatherwise which enabled us to Verticut greens to a depth of 3mm, Scarify the greens to a depth of 12mm which was carried out by a local contractor. These two operations remove thatch from below the surface of the greens. We then overseeded greens with fescue seed followed by a topdressing of sand, and finally brushed in with our small tractor mounted brush. Brushing in the sand helps work the sand and seed down into the grooves created from verticutting and scarifying. All the work was completed on the Tuesday with a few extra hours which was a great effort from the team. The weeks following the greens have been sprayed with a liquid feed and a mix of biostimulants.
Tees have been scarified and topdressed for the first time in a long time. We plan to complete this work to the tees once a year to prevent excessive thatch build up and help them to uptake available nutrients more efficiently. We then applied a slow-release granular fertiliser to the tees and approaches which should keep them ticking over for 3-4 months. During April the club hired in a remote-controlled stump grinder to clear all recent and old tree stumps. This was much needed as the stumps not only look unsightly but can affect play and damage machinery! Bunkers have been very difficult to maintain recently. Heavy persistent rain for a few hours can cause 2 days of work to try and reinstate bunkers. After heavy rainfall bunkers must be tillered to de compact the sand and sand that has washed down bunker faces has to be shovelled and pushed back up the faces, then the bunker can be fully raked. Bunkers were edged earlier this month which takes around one and a half days with two staff, and we have also topped up several bunkers with fresh sand. We will continue topping bunkers up when time allows. Now fairway mats are not compulsory, and most tees are back in play, we are now filling divot bins up weekly, so we ask that you continue filling in divots on fairways and tees. Unrepaired Pitchmarks continue to be an issue on our greens, can we remind all golfers to repair their pitchmarks please. Most of the ropes out protecting areas of the course during the winter months have now been removed or reduced. There are however still a couple of ropes still out on the course, please continue to adhere to these ropes and refrain from taking trolleys or buggies into or past roped off areas. The damaged areas caused by crows pecking on some fairways have been seeded and topdressed with rootzone, these areas are marked GUR. We plan to repair areas around the course that have lost grass coverage due to water standing for prolonged periods of time. This will be done when time allows.
The new fence on the 10th tee is now completed and we would like to thank Andy Lyth for the purchase of this and we are sure you will agree it finishes the area off nicely. A couple of thanks to David Perkins for helping cut the hedge along the 16th bridge and as some may have noticed we have a new resident swan in the 10th pond! We would like to thank David for this, Let’s hope the swan doesn’t decide to venture into the 14th ravine with the croc! A thanks to Eddie Burton for painting the new marker post for the 2nd fairway. And finally, to Robin Conner for maintaining the grassed area around the car park, clubhouse and driving range building.
Thanks
Greens team
We are now slowly getting into our regular cutting regime with tees, surrounds and approaches cut twice a week. Semi rough all cut once over each week and greens every other day at present but will soon be every day when ground temperatures rise, and we see more growth. With us currently being short staffed we have had to reduce moving holes to once a week. In normal circumstances we would usually move the holes at least twice a week at this time of year. Moving holes can take 3-4 hours. As many of you will know we took delivery of the new fairway mower which had been on order for around 2 years. Since it has arrived it has been out on the course most hours of the day. We have found fairways have taken a lot of work to get them something like. As well as the wet conditions, the milder winter has meant that there has been steady growth throughout the winter months resulting in much more grass on the fairways and rough this spring. The fairways also lay with the direction of foot traffic, this has meant we have had to brush fairways with the tractor mounted brush as regularly as we can to reduce the knap therefore receiving a cleaner cut. The club have purchased a tractor mounted trailed Lastec rotary mower. This mower is used for cutting our semi rough. We have found this has saved us nearly half the time it usually took to cut rough, saving us valuable time. This has certainly exceeded our expectations of what we expected. Strimming and flymowing areas on the course continue pretty much daily at the moment.
The beginning of April saw us start our greens maintenance week. The poor forecast for the week along with a staff shortage and only 4 days to complete the work due to the bank holiday Monday brought a last moment change of plans. The original plan was to hollow core the greens, but with already very wet conditions and more rain forecast this was decided against. Coring the greens in such conditions with very little time would have been unviable. Instead, we continued with the other operations we had planned that week which we knew we could get done before the weather turned. Luckily Tuesday was a good day weatherwise which enabled us to Verticut greens to a depth of 3mm, Scarify the greens to a depth of 12mm which was carried out by a local contractor. These two operations remove thatch from below the surface of the greens. We then overseeded greens with fescue seed followed by a topdressing of sand, and finally brushed in with our small tractor mounted brush. Brushing in the sand helps work the sand and seed down into the grooves created from verticutting and scarifying. All the work was completed on the Tuesday with a few extra hours which was a great effort from the team. The weeks following the greens have been sprayed with a liquid feed and a mix of biostimulants.
Tees have been scarified and topdressed for the first time in a long time. We plan to complete this work to the tees once a year to prevent excessive thatch build up and help them to uptake available nutrients more efficiently. We then applied a slow-release granular fertiliser to the tees and approaches which should keep them ticking over for 3-4 months. During April the club hired in a remote-controlled stump grinder to clear all recent and old tree stumps. This was much needed as the stumps not only look unsightly but can affect play and damage machinery! Bunkers have been very difficult to maintain recently. Heavy persistent rain for a few hours can cause 2 days of work to try and reinstate bunkers. After heavy rainfall bunkers must be tillered to de compact the sand and sand that has washed down bunker faces has to be shovelled and pushed back up the faces, then the bunker can be fully raked. Bunkers were edged earlier this month which takes around one and a half days with two staff, and we have also topped up several bunkers with fresh sand. We will continue topping bunkers up when time allows. Now fairway mats are not compulsory, and most tees are back in play, we are now filling divot bins up weekly, so we ask that you continue filling in divots on fairways and tees. Unrepaired Pitchmarks continue to be an issue on our greens, can we remind all golfers to repair their pitchmarks please. Most of the ropes out protecting areas of the course during the winter months have now been removed or reduced. There are however still a couple of ropes still out on the course, please continue to adhere to these ropes and refrain from taking trolleys or buggies into or past roped off areas. The damaged areas caused by crows pecking on some fairways have been seeded and topdressed with rootzone, these areas are marked GUR. We plan to repair areas around the course that have lost grass coverage due to water standing for prolonged periods of time. This will be done when time allows.
The new fence on the 10th tee is now completed and we would like to thank Andy Lyth for the purchase of this and we are sure you will agree it finishes the area off nicely. A couple of thanks to David Perkins for helping cut the hedge along the 16th bridge and as some may have noticed we have a new resident swan in the 10th pond! We would like to thank David for this, Let’s hope the swan doesn’t decide to venture into the 14th ravine with the croc! A thanks to Eddie Burton for painting the new marker post for the 2nd fairway. And finally, to Robin Conner for maintaining the grassed area around the car park, clubhouse and driving range building.
Thanks
Greens team