Course Update

The winter continues to be mild and dry which has allowed us to carry out vertidraining of the fairways and tees with no weather disruptions. We have now finished vertidraining with 12mm solid tynes at 150mm depth at 75mm spacings.

Vertidrain with 12mm tynes

We have been experimenting with products to control the worm castings on fairways and tees this winter and we have definitely had an improvement in the condition of the fairways with a lot less mud being picked up on golfers shoes, trundlers and equipment. We are also regularly dragging the fairways with a weighted hose that breaks up the worm casting before they get smeared with the foot traffic.The fairways are in the best condition I have seen them in for this time of year.

The newly seeded area between the 3rd green and the 4th tee has come along nicely. It has been recently fertilised and reseeded in a couple of washed out areas.

Seeded area between 3rd green & 4th tee

In the next few weeks we will be starting the winter maintenance on the irrigation system. This entails trimming around every sprinkler on the golf course and then checking for correct height and verticality, correct operation of the sprinkler and repair any weeping or broken parts that are found.
After the irrigation system frustrations of last year behind us I am hoping we will be in great shape when we need to start irrigating in springtime.

Overall I don't think I've seen the golf course looking this good at this time of year so I would encourage everyone to get out and enjoy themselves while the weather is still holding up -you never know when when it will change for the worst!

A frosty morning

Keen golfers !

1st green and surrounds

Heavy rain

Early Saturday morning we received 27mm of rain in about 4 hours and caused quite a lot of surface flooding over the course. We haven't had a downpour like that for about 2 years and it resulted in the course being closed for the day. Fortunately we dry out quite quickly and were back open Sunday for the club championship finals. Below are some photos of the flooding.

One of the benefits of the rain was the excellent results we had with the application of Tea seed meal Friday afternoon. We applied it to all the green surrounds and quite a few bad areas on fairways that are shaded all afternoon this time of the year. The results were spectacular.

Earthworms in the surrounds

Earthworms on the 10th fairway

Even earthworms in the bunkers

Earthworms on the greens

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

What's happening on the course

It's been a very busy time on the golf course since my last post. We have had a very warm, dry summer and it was a great test to see how the irrigation system would perform after the  control system and wiring were recently repaired. Well I can say it worked a treat with no issues at all other than a pipe repair on the 3rd fairway which was probably a remnant of the damage from the earthquakes.

Damage to an 80mm fitting after some recent shakes

The repaired pipe

With the warm weather came very strong turf growth over the whole course. During this time I had a lot of trouble keeping the greens at a good speed even with the use of growth regulators and very little nitrogen applied. The tees, fairways and rough were also needing quite frequent mowing which took up a lot of our time. Leading up to our renovations on the greens I only applied foliar nitrogen at 10kg/Ha a week prior to vertidraining with 18mm solid tynes and we got amazing recovery. We were nearly back to normal mowing height 2 weeks after renovation with no extra fertiliser.

The 9th green 2 weeks after 18mm solid tynes and topdressing.

Recently we got news that funding had been approved for the purchase of a topdressing machine and we chose to buy a Dakota 410 towed topdresser. This machine can put out topdressing at a heavy rate or very lightly to dust. It can also be used to spread fertiliser. This purchase will allow us to dust our greens on a regular basis through the growing season and help dilute thatch, firm the surfaces even more and help with better smoothness and ball roll. This will be a major improvement on how we have been able to manage our greens previously.

An example of the Dakota 410 applying a very light dusting.

Our most recent project on the course was completed today and that was the overseeding of all the fairways with a fine fescue/browntop mix. Over the last 3 years we have been gradually removing the ryegrass from the fairways and encouraging the browntop and fescue to take over. This process has been fairly successful and we were now at the point where we could introduce more browntop and fescue without it having to compete with other grasses. We will have about 8 weeks for the seed to establish before we hit the colder months of winter when the grass growth will slow down. Next spring and summer should enable us to thicken up the turf and have a much better fairway surface with a more dense stand of turf.

Seed drill in action

The slits where the seed is placed

Close up of the seed sitting in the slit 

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Course Update

This past week we have managed to install all the sprinkler decoders that had been removed and sent for testing in Auckland. With the decoders in ground we ran several tests through the decoder diagnostics tool on our computer and once I was satisfied that everything was working correctly all the holes were filled back in, levelled and seeded in any bare areas.
Another job that had been hanging around for a little while was a pipe leak repair on the 10th fairway. The leak was in a 150 mm pipe mainline and with the dry weather we have been having I was waiting for some rain so if there was any delay in the repair it wouldn't affect our irrigation too much. As it turned out we had quite a rain and hailstorm last Sunday which provided a good opportunity to shut the system down and make the repair.

Storm clouds approaching

Draining the pipeline

Mainline with tee pieces

Faulty 150mm pipe removed from tee piece

The finished repair

The damaged pipe worn by water pressure

With the irrigation repair finished and back-filled the golf course had returned to normal playing condition for the first time since mid July. We haven't had the course free of holes on fairways, tees or rough since July because of all the searching for faults and repairs we were making to get the irrigation system operating properly. With this year nearing the end I am hoping that 2016 brings us less trying conditions so that we can concentrate on maintaining and grooming the golf course.

Course Update

After many months looking for wiring faults in our irrigation system we have finally found the major cause of our problems. The decoder interface had an intermittent fault that eventually worsened to the point that it failed completely and we had no power to the course at all. Fortunately we were supplied a temporary interface until a new one could be shipped from overseas. We are now full operational with the new LDI installed.
We have sent our suspect decoders to Auckland for testing and are waiting for them to be returned so that we can finish the repairs to the system and fill in the holes on the fairways.

New LDI installed

Now the irrigation system has been sorted we have been able to do more regular mowing and maintenance around the course. The fairways are starting to show the benefits of more regular mowing and areas of the rough are really starting to be defined with the dry weather burning off  the grass and the seedhead growing and lengthening.

Regular fairway mowing and rough drying out

With more regular watering and limited preseason maintenance done on the system due to chasing our electrical issues we were bound to have some problems crop up. One of or pumps had a fuse burn out, several pipe leaks have appeared and an unusual pipe problem at another pump shed recently appeared.

Deformed, leaking pipe at pump shed 3