Course Update

This week has been quite productive with all greens being renovated with solid 12mm tynes and topdressed with turf sand. We had great weather for the 2 days the course was closed for renovations and we were able to get the sand brushed into the core holes reasonably well by the time we opened the course on Wednesday. As is usual after renovations the greens will be quite furry for a while because it takes a while for the turf to grow through the sand and get the cutting height of the mowers back to normal height. We do this for several reasons - (1) we don't want to pick up the sand in the cutting units and damage the blades, and (2)  the turf is quite tender after the abrasive affects of rubbing the sand into the turf surface and we don't want to stress the plant more at an early stage of recovery.

12mm solid tynes at 150mm depth

Turf sand spread on 11th green

Cushman topdresser

During the week we also vertidrained the surrounds of the greens. While the greens and surrounds have been opened up with solid tyning we have taken the opportunity to treat them again with wetting agent and heavily watered the product to get it into the soil profile. This application will get us into early winter with hopefully a good, even moisture content through the soil profile.

One negative occurrence during the week was a damaged irrigation control cable near the 6th green that was caused by the vertidrain. Over the years we have vertidrained the surrounds of this green half a dozen times with out ever hitting the cable. This time the cable was severed and we found it using a cable locator(borrowed from Richard at Waitikiri GC) about 75-100mm below the surface. I am quite sure that this won't be the last time we hit a shallow cable because the reality is we don't know for sure where every bit of cable runs, and at what depth. In this situation we uncovered quite a length of cable and proceeded to repair it and bury it at a depth of 350mm where it won't be in danger of being hit with machinery in the future.

Cable break when hit by the Vertidrain 

Irrigation cable at a shallow depth