Course Update

We have now finished the vertidraining of all fairways and are in a bit better position as far as drainage goes if we start getting more frequent rainfall. I have recently checked the water table level on the 17th fairway to see how we are looking compared to this time last year. The water table at the moment is about 500mm below the fairway surface (this time last year it was at 300mm below the surface) so we have more chance of the fairway draining in the event of a large amount of rain falling.

One thing to point out at the moment is the continual loss of gum trees around the course. For no particular reason, large well established gum trees are dying in random places around the course. The latest gum tree to die is between the 2nd fairway and 17th tee and is the fifth large gum tree to die within the last 2-3 months.

Dead gum near the 17th tee 

With the onset of cooler, damper conditions we are always on the lookout for diseases that can occur this time of year. The main disease we get this time of year is Fusarium and mainly affects the greens. We normally have a couple of areas that tend to show signs of disease and these indicator greens guide us on when or if we spray to treat the problem. Recently these hot spots increased in activity so we decided to get a fungicide out on all greens to protect them from major damage as the environmental conditions were very favourable for the spread of Fusarium.

Typical signs of Fusarium

Another recent irrigation repair was made to the control cable near the back of the 11th green. A fault appeared and we had no communication to any sprinklers down the 10th and 11th fairways so I knew that a cable was severed. As we had recently finished vertidraining I suspected a shallow cable was cut. Knowing roughly the position of the cable and what sprinklers were affected I worked out that the damage was done in an area not recently vertidrained. It turns out that it was old damage from vertidraining surrounds that suddenly gave out.

Cable damage near the 11th green (note the burnt ends of the cable totally separating the wire)

Recently we had a heavy morning fog which closed in suddenly leaving the golf course looking very eerie. Below are some photos from the 10th fairway.

  

Course Update

It has been a while since the last post so I thought I would update everyone about what has been happening. With short working weeks with Easter and Anzac Day, as well as being short staffed due to a family bereavement, it has been fairly slow progress with the fairway vertidraining.
We will finish all vertidraining early next week and it should help with removing surface water when we eventually get heavy rainfall. This month has bought a change in weather with cooler conditions, regular rainfall without any downpours and some strong winds. Winter is just around the corner.

The cooler weather has bought about a slow down in turf growth so the mowing has reduced and cutting heights have been raised slightly to maintain good turf density through winter. One issue we deal with this time of year is the increased number of worm castings on the surface of the fairways. The castings get smeared on the surface with machinery, golf carts and foot traffic and the fairways look quite muddy. A few years ago we had a chemical that had good long term control of the worms, but unfortunately that is now off the market and there is nothing that is available that has good control and not too expensive. We are trying to acidify the surface of the fairways with regular applications of Sulphate of Ammonia to try and discourage the worms. This will be an ongoing process.

Fairway Vertidraining

We have started vertidraining the fairways with 18mm solid tynes to try and break up the hardpan under the surface. At the moment we are concentrating on the low areas on fairways that caused us problems last year with ponding for long periods of time after we received heavy rain early last year.

We have had a report done on our drainage issues in these areas by NZSTI and one of the recommendations in that report was to try and shatter the layer of  heavy, silty loam that sits on top of the sand profile. Our worst layer is on the 17th fairway which is more than 300mm thick in places and vertidraining will only punch down to about 250mm deep. I am hoping that we have some shattering affect that will crack through the layer in places and give us better water infiltration when we do get heavy rain. At least we will have a lot more air space in the soil profile that will hold more moisture when it does rain and hopefully get it away from the surface.

At the moment we have vertidrained the low areas on the 8th, 9th &17th fairways 3 times and increased the tyne depth 25 mm each time because the ground is so hard and the machine can't cope with full depth straight away. We are now at 175mm deep and will probably need to tyne these areas at least 3 more times before we are at our maximum depth. When we have completed these areas we will start on all fairways before winter hits. Most of our fairway drain fairly well because we don't have many areas with thick layers of silty loam so these won't need to be treated so severely and to such a depth. We should be able to easily punch holes down to 150-175mm without much problem as long as we avoid shallow pipework and cable which is always a possibility.

vertidrain with 18mm solid tyned

vertidrain holes in one of the hardpan areas on 17th fairway

Rain

Overnight our weather station recorded 11.7mm of rainfall which is the highest single rain event in 24 hours since 18/6/14.
Our yearly total for 2015 of  42.6mm is down half on the historical average of 83mm for the first 2 months of the year and our total of 123.9mm for the last 6 months is also down more than half on the historical average of 268mm.

Overnight rainfall data

Soaking rain on Friday

I hope this change of seasons doesn't bring the rainfall that we received in March & April of last year where we were saturated in several parts of the golf course. 

Course Update

 This week we are seeing continued progress on the greens after the renovations with good turf growth and filling in of the tyne holes. The sand has mostly disappeared and we are gradually lowering the mowing height. In fact Saturday morning we were back to 4mm height but because of the excessive leaf growth it is still a bit furry. By the end of this week we should be pretty much back to normal conditions on the putting greens.

Good turf cover after 10 days

This week we vertidrained the tees to keep the water infiltration continuing through the soil profile. We are still having warm, dry conditions so this procedure helps with getting water to where the turf needs it - the rootzone.

Vertidraining the 5th tee

We also had to make an irrigation repair to a section of old, grey PVC pipe behind the 7th green. Because it was in quite a sandy area we didn't become aware of it until Tuesday. The leaking water would go straight to ground until a big enough hole appeared in the pipe and it then showed at the surface.

Next week's weather looks like continuing the trend of warm conditions with Monday forecast to be 31degrees. There is some rain in the forecast later in the week so fingers crossed, we get a good dumping of rain to freshen things up. Because of our irrigation systems capacity, it isn't possible to get the required amount of water to the fairways during a run of very warm to hot weather. We irrigate tees and greens to their needs but have to hold back on the fairways a bit or we end up running sprinklers all morning.

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

Course Update

This last week has continued with warm, dry and now, windy conditions. We have managed to keep the moisture content on the greens and tees to a good level and as usual this time of year the mounded high areas on the fairways tend to dry out. This summer we have applied wetting agent to the high areas on fairways as well as the greens and tees. This approach has paid dividends with tinges of green throughout all sprayed areas on the fairways. Not only has it held colour, but it has maintained a better turf density than previous years where it would normally thin out into bare spots. We are still at the early stages with this program and I would hope for better turf coverage each year as we progress. This is only part of our fairway program but it appears that it has been quite beneficial so far.

As I mentioned in the last post about the unusual sprinkler repair with the broken pieces of fibrolite pipe, how many times will this occur! Well I didn't have to wait long. This week the sprinklers on the ladies 6th tee wouldn't shut down properly. As these are a bank of 4 sprinklers controlled by one valve, the problem had to be in the valve. After dismantling the valve I found a large chunk of fibrolite pipe jammed in the valve housing. With the debris removed and valve reassembled, the sprinklers worked fine.

Valve for ladies 6th tee(note the tree roots from nearby trees)

Fibrolite pipe jammed in the valve

I had a small window of opportunity to spray the greens for weed control (Pratia & Cotula) this week. We had one morning with no wind early on so I managed to get a herbicide and insecticide application on with just under a fortnight to  go until renovations on the greens. By the time greens have recovered from the coring and topdressing the weeds should get quite a touch up and the Browntop bent should grow through the weak areas. Next week we will putting on a foliar spray of Sulphate of Ammonia to keep the turf ticking along. 

With no real rain in the short term forecasts we will remain vigilant with the irrigation and keep the greens in good shape so that they recover well from the renovations