As we have entered June the course has now come to life with strong growth all over. It certainly took its time as the cold dry late spring meant that the growth spurt you normally get in spring was late in coming.
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| Michael cutting greens |
Strong growth on the greens has meant that their pace has come into question as we have struggled to keep it fast enough for many of the members. It would be nice to work on the greens in the afternoons, giving a dry cut can make such a big difference. However with many a midweek competition and matches going on this is not always possible. With the strong growth the greens slow up during the day, but now the spurt seems to have subsided which means we should be able to control a better pace. Topdressing in the form of light dustings will be applied as regularly as possible to help with smoothness. You can read a more detailed piece regarding the difficulty of maintaining pace at the link below
The tees also have been growing really well, the fertiliser having kicked in well. The idea was to try and thicken up the tees so that we can provide a much better quality of surface. A growth retardant can be used to help thicken the sward and keep top growth from becoming out of hand.
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| Strong growth |
We have started to scarify the fairways using the new tractor and Terra Rake. This works in a similar way as your garden rake would when you scarify your lawn, just on a larger scale. The debris pulled out is blown away into the rough by the new blower and if there is plenty of it we can pick it up using the cut and collector Super 500.
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| Scarification |
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| Spring growth |
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| Strimmed ready for spraying |
It is difficult when trying to concentrate on all the larger areas of the course and its excessive growth to make time for some other areas such as bunkers, trees and ditches. We try and work on these areas as much as possible to keep up with presentation and last week all the ditches were strimmed inside and outside ready for weedkilling.
Over the next week or so the fairways will continue to be scarified and the bunkers will all be looked at for strimming, weedkilling and also topping up with new sand. We have a priority list that we can refer to with the budgeted amount of sand.
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| Saturday competition cancelled |
We need the weather to play ball a bit more as this week has been very difficult to maintain the golf course. At the time of writing we had 100mm of rain from the start of the week, which made at least two days just about impossible to carry out any course maintenance. During this time, machinery was serviced and sharpened and the barn tidied. The staff will continue to work hard to present the course as best as possible.
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