Greens Aerification

Over the last 2 days, we aerified all of our greens. The next step is to top-dress them heavily with sand. This process causes a little disruption to golfers but it is essential and highly beneficial to the greens. The main benefit is it relieves soil compaction, over the course of the year the greens get so much traffic from golfers walking on them and us mowing them that the soil gets compacted. Roots need oxygen so this is not good for them. In good soil, roots get oxygen from tiny pockets of air trapped between soil and sand particles. This process helps us achieve that in our greens. We chose to use a small side eject tine which creates only a small hole in comparison to typical 3/4 inch hollow tines.

Verti Draining Fairways

This week we have started Verti draining our fairways. This will greatly benefit the course. The main benefit of using this machine is improved drainage. The tines on this machine are set to penetrate the surface to a depth of 9 inches, so you can imagine how this will help with compaction. It will also help get air down to the roots of the turf. The small holes left in the fairway as a result shouldn't last longer than a week.

New Tee Box

This week, we added a new championship tee box on no.5. The tee will add around 15 yards to the hole. It is pushed back into the border fence, further left than the existing tee, which calls for the shot to be shaped off the tee, making the hole substantially tougher when playing from the blues. When the turf becomes established, we will gradually lower the height of cut on the new sod, down to tee height.

 

 

 

 

 

Tree Work on No. 5

Today we cut back all the overhanging branches to the left of No. 5 tee and fairway. From years of growth, the trees on the border were overhanging and impeding tee shots. This opens up the hole off the tee considerably. With the trees cut back, we plan to reopen the old championship tee in the near future too. Below are some before and after pictures.

Drainage Work

Today we began drainage work on the golf course. Due to the excessive rain we've seen this year, some areas on the golf course have become saturated. We started in the spinney on the right hand side of no. 2. We are installing a drain that will run from the trees down to the lake to the right of the 3rd green. Also on no. 2 we are making an open drain that will start in the rough on the left hand side and run across the fairway down to the lake on the right. This will help drain the rough on the left quicker, an area which is always soggy after rain. It will also be a water hazard which will help toughen up the hole considerably. We have more drainage work planned in the coming weeks for other areas on the course.

Heavy Top Dressing

We heavily top dressed all of our greens today with around 1.5 tonnes of sand per green. We had planed to do it on Tuesday after pencil tining greens on Monday but we had to hold off due to the heavy rain. The reasons for putting down more sand than our usual top dressing was to really help firm up the greens after all the rain we've been getting, it will also help prevent our mowers from scalping the green, along with all the other benefits.

Productive Monday

Today was a good day, We finally got a full days work done without the rain interrupting us. June hasn't been great weather wise so far to say the least! Hopefully it will take a turn and everyone can get started playing some summer golf. We got everything mowed on the golf course today accept some of the rough, we also pencil-tined greens with a solid tine to relieve compaction, this process is very beneficial and should be unnoticeable by the end of the week.