Sunday 18 September 2016

Course Update

Since the last post the weather has continued to be amazing for this time of the year. The mild, dry conditions have continued apart from a couple of occasions when we got a quick southerly blast of winter weather. The last storm a bit over a week ago brought strong winds and quite a bit of rain which left the course in a bit of a mess with trees down and debris everywhere. Thanks to Dave and the team of volunteers, the course was cleaned up fairly quickly with a couple of big trees remaining to be cleared away. Several large Macrocarpas actually fell onto neighbour's property damaging fences and a garage. Because of the extent of  the damage we had to get tree professionals in to safely remove the trees so as to avoid further damage.
Fallen macrocarpa on 17
Macrocarpa on neighbour's garage
Hailstones on the first green

A little over a month ago we completed treating all the fairways with a product to control worm castings. It has been quite successful with no sign of casting in any treated areas and we will continue to monitor the results. At this stage it is quite promising and could be a viable option for future control.
Fairways free of worm castings

As is normal practise this time of year we are going through the irrigation system and checking the operation of all the sprinklers to make sure we are ready to go in springtime when watering is required. We have found a few split sprinkler casings as well as several blocked nozzles and weeping sprinklers. There has been nothing major unlike last year when we had major controller issues. It is fairly normal when we first fire up the irrigation system to get a few pipe leaks and this year has been no different. We have had 2 large pipe repairs, one being an old 100 mm a/c pipe that we had to dig up under a pine tree.
Pipe leak on 5th fairway
100 mm pipe repaired
A/C pipe repaired under macrocarpa near 6th tee

The start of spring has begun with strong growth on the fairways and in the rough and we are now into mowing mode on a regular basis. We have also started our sand dusting program on the greens with the new Dakota topdressing machine and are only about 3 weeks away from our green renovations. I am expecting excellent recovery from the renovations this year with the soil temperatures being a little higher than we would normally be this time of year. As I mentioned in a previous post the course has never looked better for this time of year so I encourage everyone to get out, bring a mate and enjoy themselves.