Maintenance Week

This week the staff have worked hard to perform as much tasks as possible, despite over an inch of rain falling on the course. This put paid to any chance we had of coring the greens. Before the week started we looked at the forecast, the soil temperature, the golfing calendar and the expected recovery time and we took the decision that hollow coring was not the option at this time.

 

We tried to use the weather to our advantage as we knew that the heavy rain would wash in the topdressing nicely. So on Monday we solid spiked the greens with 10mm wide tines (on the new Wiedenmann GXi8) down to a depth of 6 inches. We followed this up on Tuesday by firstly brushing the greens with the sweep and fill brush to stand up the grass. Then they were cut before topdressing commenced. The topdressing went on fairly heavy in the rain so much so that when we were dressing the bottom four greens, the dressing on the top greens had almost been washed in already. This meant we were able to put more on straightaway. The dressing was then run over using a dragmat to help with smoothness. 

 

On Wednesday and Thursday we then spiked the greens again with the Procore using 8mm tines down to 4 inches. This was followed by more dressing, matting, brushing and cutting. On Friday the greens were cut and ironed to help bring the pace up a touch as carrying out this kind of work always drops the pace off. We have managed to put around 25 tons of material onto the greens this week which is a really good effort considering the challenging start to the week and the lack of growth. Soil temperatures are now up again to a respectable level and so with another feed due on the greens next week, we should see an improvement in their playability once again. Regular light dressings, brushing and cutting will be carried out to inprove smoothness.

 

Also this week we have took the opportunity to spike all the tees and approaches with the 10mm tines as well as fertilising the tees with a slow release, season long granular fertiliser. The fairways and roughs were cut too to help improve presentation. As growth continues the golf course will continue to come to life.