Course Update

This week we received our first good  rainfall for some time (15mm). To put that into context our monthly totals for the last 3 months have been August -15mm, September- 16mm & October- 12mm.
The wetting agent that we have applied around the course has certainly been of benefit with the minimal rainfall. Areas that would normally dry out on mounds and high spots have retained moisture and reduced runoff when irrigation is applied.

Turf cover and colour maintained on the mounds.

With the drier weather watering with the irrigation system has become more regular and the readings that we are getting from our soil moisture meter have been helpful in monitoring when irrigation is needed. Even this early in the season I can see that we are using less water than would normally be the case. The greens in particular aren't getting watered as often as previous years, yet are still maintaining a good turf cover with minimal dry areas. At the moment greens are getting watered about once a week with 12-15mm of irrigation each time whereas other years it may have been about every second night with roughly 4-6 mm irrigation. At the moment hand watering hasn't been needed.

Turf cover on a historically dry area on a green.

We have completed all of our weed spraying on tees, fairways and all areas of the roughs. As is typical the slight discolouring and slowing down of growth has occurred but this should return to normal in the next couple of weeks.

From the photo above you can see the greens have maintained a good colour despite only receiving 10kg of Sulphate of Ammonia (the only nitrogen source) since February 2014. Our fertility program for the greens supplies the bulk of the nitrogen in spring and early autumn in the form of a slow release product that delivers about 70-80kg of actual N(Nitrogen) to the greens per year.  We try to keep the actual N total under 100kg annually. We are due to apply this fertiliser in the next couple of weeks and it will give us a full 3 months of even, sustained growth with no flush at the beginning. Combined with the fertilising of the greens we will be sand dusting lightly on a weekly basis to help with any thatch accumulation and also to keep the surfaces firm. Unfortunately we don't have a spinner style topdressing machine so we make do with a Vicon fertiliser spreader. It does an OK job but it is one item of machinery that I would dearly like to upgrade. I will post some photos of the old thing in a future post.

One of the more unusual occurrences this week was this mark on the surrounds at the back of 13 green.

Burn marks back of the 13th green

It turns out some neighbours nearby decided to let off their fireworks for Guy Fawkes night near our green. I definitely wouldn't have been amused if it was on the green!