Course Update

Since the last post we have had unseasonably warm, dry weather which has been fantastic for the establishment of the newly over-seeded fairways. We had seed germination after 2 weeks and all of the thinner areas are coming away nicely and the grass cover throughout has been kicked along with weekly foliar applications of  Ammonium Sulphate.

Seed germination in a bare area after 2 weeks

One of the projects that we have managed to do was the removal of the remains of the old path between the 3rd green and the 4th tee. The old buried rubble was causing a lot of rutting from the cart traffic and was also very difficult to keep moisture in the profile because it was very shallow. Once this material was removed we filled it with fresh soil, added an extra sprinkler and control cable at the 4th tee end and seeded it with Fescue and Browntop. Hopefully we will get germination before winter really sets in.

Newly seeded walkway to 4th tee

For some time I have been researching methods to control earthworm castings on our fairways and tees. Since the removal of Thiodan for earthworm control, our fairways have worsened each year to the point they became very muddy in areas certain times of the year. We haven't had much success with the various methods we have tried and products like Earlybird were very expensive to apply to large areas. Recently I was told about a granular version that had just been released and was considerably better value for money. I was very quick to get some granules to try out before we got into the "muddy" season. I have trialled it in about 10 areas of the course that has historically been very bad for castings. Once applied it was heavily watered in and within  10-15 minutes hundreds of earthworms were at the surface. Since the application we have had over 50mm of rainfall over weekend and thousands of earthworms have surfaced. Very impressive! It will be interesting to see how long the earthworms will be suppressed for until another application is required.

Tea seed pellets for earthworm control

Earthworms on the surface after weekend rain