Summer Work

At this time of year we are doing the same jobs day in and day out, Mowing greens, tees, approaches, fairways, rough, semi-rough, raking bunkers and setting up the course. We also have a lot of different jobs going on. At the moment we are focusing on divoting all the fairways, as you can see from the pictures below, there is a lot of them, due to the increased amount of play the course receives in the summer. We are also sodding all the bad areas in the fairways that resulted from the extremely wet winter, spraying all our spinneys with round-up and selectively spraying for weeds on the course. This morning we verticut the greens and topdressed them. We will be verticutting again next week with special units that remove more seed heads from the plant which should make the greens a little quicker and smoother.

Top Dressing and Verticutting

We got a lot of work done on the greens today. We started by verticutting them, a cultural practice which helps reduce thatch by using vertical blades that cut below the surface of the soil. It also cuts lateral growing leaves which helps promote the plant to grow up, which results in finer leaves and therefore quicker green speeds. We followed that by mowing them and then finished off with a light top dressing. We will repeat this process on a regular basis throughout the season.

New bunkers

You will be glad to know, we have just finished constructing 2 new bunkers! One on the 2nd hole just off the left side of the fairway and the other at the back of the 13th green. At the 2nd, the bunker is located around 250 yards from the white tees in a spot where a lot of wayward tee shots end up, this bunker will now call for greater accuracy from the longer hitters off the tee. On the 13th, the new bunker will catch over hit approach shots, leaving a tricky bunker shot back to a green sloping away from you. We also installed a new drain at the edge of the green on 13 which should help dry up that area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring Aerification

Today we began hollow tining our greens. This is the process where we take a small core from the greens and replace it with new sand. It is extremely beneficial to the turf and much called for after a long wet Winter. Tomorrow we plan to top dress the greens. Also as part of our Spring aerification programme, we plan to solid tine tees and approaches and Verti-drain fairways, which will set us up nicely for the coming season.



Severe Weather In 2012

As 2013 begins, we are hoping for a much dryer year than last. 2012 was one of the wettest years on record in Ireland, with June being the wettest ever on record. 849.5mm of rain was recorded at Dublin Airport, we also record rainfall every day at Citywest where 1099.5mm fell. As a result of this the course has been very soggy all winter. We have plans to combat this problem and to improve the conditions for next winter. These include drainage work, installing new drains in the worst affected areas, we will start this in the spring/summer when the ground is dryer. Extensive sanding of wet areas, this will improve percolation in the soil and allow water to drain faster. Verti-draining, which will help with compacted turf. We have also started to install some new paths around the course so as to keep traffic off the playing surfaces. On top of all this we are hoping for mother nature to help us out with a much dryer year ahead! 

 

 

 

Winter Work

As we are now in the middle of Winter, there is not much for us to do as regards mowing grass so it gives us a nice opportunity to get around to other projects we don't get time to do in the growing season. We have begun to clear out the wooded areas, which entails cutting the branches of the trees up to around head height, clearing out the leaves and removing weed trees, hopefully leaving it easier to play out of when your ball goes in there! Another project we just finished was removing all the gorse hedging from the shrub bed around the lake on the 8th hole, it had become overgrown and was crowding out the other shrubs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solid Tining Tees

This week we solid tined all of our tee boxes. This will help relieve compaction and allow air down to the roots of the plant. We plan to top dress them at the start of next week. While on the subject of the tee boxes, it would be greatly appreciated if all members and guests would refrain from dragging trolleys onto tee boxes. As we are now in winter, golf we will be played on frosty mornings. When trolleys are pulled across tees when there is frost, it burns the leaf of the plant and leaves ugly marks and weakens the plant. So please help us protect our course, thank you.