Soil analysis results in.

April 14th 2008

Another wet start, waterproofs holding up well, and the sky soon cleared to leave a cracking (if cold day). Not much sign of growth yet (good!) and the greens are running fairly true at 8 and a half foot.

A few weeks ago, I sent off for a soil chemical analysis for three of our greens. It was to ascertain if we had any phosphate deficiencies. The results that came back would indicate we have acceptable available phosphate (if on the low side.) It did show up a deficiency of potassium, another consequence of growing on a sandy medium. The 4:0:8 in a few weeks will soon perk those numbers up.

Jobs today were very routine, with a brush cut of the greens, course setup, bunkers and strimmer work being the order of the day. Other jobs included making 10T of Divot mix, topdressing newly constructed bunker tops (prior to their initial cut), machinery maintenance and plugging out heads of yorkshire fog.

The Ammonia Sulphate appled last week looks like it has improved turf health and vigour, and the brushing prior to cutting certainly increases the amount of clippings collected, with a full set of boxes coming off the greens today. I was watching some golfers putt out today and I am not entirely happy with the roll of the ball, I may cut and roll tomorrow, and possibly drop the height to 5mm by the end of the week.

Maintenance morning.

April 16th 2008

Wednesday is the Jubilee's maintenance morning. It is the day we get to topdress or carry out any work that may be disruptive to golfers. We try and get any work finished by about 10am, and the golfers are encouraged to play one of the other courses.

Today we topdressed tees with some Levenseat LV60 sand.

In total we used 15T which cover approx 2ha. Some of the tees that had been previously cored were also seeded with a 100% Fescue mix prior to topdressing. The whole process took, just over 3 hours. After this we then moved onto topdressing landing areas, the whole 18th fairway and topdressed our bentgrass dominant 17th green heavily with Dune sand. This green is already showing way too much growth (last feed was June 07!!!) so we have been brushing quite regularly and I intend topdressing weekly.

Other jobs today, were routine - Greens cutting, bunkers raked, bunker tops cut with flymo, course setup, and machinery maintenance. The height of cut has now been dropped to 5mm on all greens machines.

I also have been taking a stimp reading on my 18th green daily. We started the week (after the brush cut) at 8 ft 6in, and are now at 9ft 5in. Should be a lot quicker tomorrow with the drop in height and a pedestrian cut, maybe I should roll as well for a laugh......Stop any Augusta comments!!!

This job always surprises me!

April 17th 2008

Cold winds from the East today, you can see the colour getting blown away from the course again after the initial signs of growth late last week.

We handcut greens this morning at the new height of 5mm. Seeing as the greens were running at 9 and a half feet yesterday, I expected them to be pretty slick today, but no........Even though we got at least 2 boxes of grass each, the greens had actually dropped in speed to 8 foot 6 inches! We did have 2 short, sharp showers of rain today, which seems to have made a significant impact on speed.

Other than hancutting, everything else was routine and consisted of a lot of small odd jobs being completed. Things like hand watering areas that were headed (with wetting agent), machinery maintenance (1600's for tomorrow), flymo work, cleaning tombstones, heading work, changing holes, raking bunkers and cutting lush areas of rough.

Tomorrow I want to cut tees, and possibly do a triple cut and roll on the greens. We also need to set up the sprayer for next weeks tees, aprons, fairways and semirough herbicide application with Spearhead.

Irrigation been on over the weekend.

April 21st 2008

We seem to be unable to shake off these cold winds from the East. Growth has returned to its shell, and the place is drying up quickly, resulting in greens being not as smooth as we would like. To combat the drying surfaces, I have had my irrigation system on, which delivers a full sprinkler turn of moisture each night to all areas. In total we use 190 cubic metres per night. The moisture applied to the greens is then monitored by observing the moisture content of the rootzone by taking plugs from greens known to have irrigation / dry patch issues.

Greens were stimped today and the 18th seems to have picked up some pace after Thursdays slow down. At the moment they are running on average at 9ft. Ideally I dont want to see them under 8 and if that happens then the rollers will be coming out more often.

Another important job started today. The fairways (13 of them) were sprayed with Spearhead for weed control. I have always found Spearhead to be a good product, allowing 1 hit to kill all the weeds for a season, without having to go back to spray off re emerging weeds. Davie used 30L in total today (6ha) and will finish them off tomorrow, before moving onto spray aprons, tees and semirough/rough areas.

Other jobs were routine such as cutting greens, course setup, raking bunkers, handwatering greens, and preparing divot mix for tomorrow. We also had some irrigation issues over the weekend, so Simon and Neil looked into these for me. The roadworks were also finished (20T of red dust spread to fill any potholes.) and we started to strim some bunker faces.

Hydrojecting today.

April 23rd 2008

Maintenance morning today on the Jubilee, and the main job to do was to hydroject some greens. We had the goal of achieving 9 today and finish the remainder off next week. This was to try and avoid any disruption to golf, (we had a visiting party start at 9.30) and by only doing 9 we can reduce the hole spacing to achieve more effective results. The plan then was to tackle all the odd greens, with 3 hydrojects being sent out. We had a few initial teething problems such as leaky hoses, but all went well and we finished the 9 greens just after 10am. Great results, not a blemish present on the greens, but lots of narrow needle holes that will allow some root growth. Importantly we also sprayed wetting agent and some Ammonia Sulphate onto the greens at the same time. The wetting agent used was Tricure and was applied at 12L/ha and was tank mixed with the liquid Ammonia sulphate at 20L/ha.

Other jobs included cutting greens before all of the above, raking bunkers, course setup, strimming bunker faces and finishing off some sandpatching work.

Tomorrow looks like it will be wet again, so we will apply some Ammonia Sulphate to our fairways, again at 20L/ha. We will also handcut greens, and change holes. Just to note the greens were still running smoothly at 9, even after all of the above.It looks like we may get some growth over the weekend, so I would expect this figure to start dropping, therefore the amount of turf ironing I will need to do, has to increase accordingly.

Ammonium Sulphate applied to fairways.

April 24th 2008

Forecast was so right today, and I am glad we decided not to apply any herbicide today because it would have washed off with the rain we had about 11am. Instead of spraying Spearhead, we applied Ammonium Sulphate to the fairways. Davie managed to get 12 completed and will finish off the remainder tomorrow. The fertiliser was applied at 20l/ha and 600l/ha of water.

We also handcut greens, changed holes, raked bunkers and cut aprons.

Todays stimp reading was 8ft 7inches, still nicely in the range I am after.

Seeding work to our putting green

April 25th 2008

Achieved loads today! Lots of proper course maintenance to address certain issues we have on the Jub. Our 17th green is the most fertile green I have ever come across! It requires double cutting daily and brushing at least 3 times a week to stand up any lateral growth of the bentgrass dominated surface. We have put in place a practice of topdressing with at least 1 tonne of dune sand every week to try and create a more slow growing environment.(I will also limit fertiliser and irrigation inputs to this green to try and push the fescue on). This has been achieved for the past 3 weeks. This green has only had 2Kg of N since last June and it still keeps growing!

Another problem area we have on the Jubilee is our clubhouse putting green. This has a high pH beach sand rootzone that was then turfed with non indigenous turf which came with a silty layer, resulting in surface drainage problems developing to this green. This has been showing itself by meadow grass ingression as the fescue thins because it does not like sitting with its feet wet. The proposed remedial action is to core / seed / topdress as often as possible, spike / topdress as often as possible, seed fescue as often as possible and apply primo once a month to keep the fescue healthy and tight. Therefore today we seeded this green using the proseeder in 2 directions, switching the seed in and then topdressing.

Davie finished off spraying fairways with Ammonia Sulphate, in total he used 200L of product over 10ha. The fairways are looking pretty hairy at the moment due to spraying this week with herbicide and having to leave them 3 days after to allow efficient transport of the chemical throughout the weed.

Other jobs included, cutting greens, handcutting tees, raking bunkers, cutting bunker tops, handweeding greens and bray seeding weak areas on our 12th and 13th greens.

Finally, todays Stimp reading on the 18th was.......9ft 6in! Shows the effect of a day without rain, getting a little quick for comfort, especially if the wind was to get up over the weekend.

Washout...

April 28th 2008

Pretty poor day today, heavy showers forecast so no herbicide was sprayed. We did however manage to get some stress free wetting agent onto greens, finally! We had 4 containers in our warm drying room overnight. 5L was then added to a bucket full of hot water and mixed. This turned out to be too concentrated because the material still jellified. We then cut the bucket ratio down to 1L per bucket of hot water and thoroughly mixed. This was then added to the spray tank. Very involved method, but did work in the end. I dont think the workshop were too happy at me draining their hot water tank though!

Other jobs today (before the rain fell!) was too cut greens, feed aprons with scotts Invigorator. This has a ratio of 4:0:8 and was put down at 20g/sqm. Simon used 145Kg in total. Tomorrow I hope to feed the greens with the same product. We also raked bunkers, carried out course setup and carried out the induction of a new member of staff called Lucas Andrews from Canada.

The rain that fell totalled 13mm in a couple of hours, at one stage the rain rate was 26mm per hour. The guys concentrated on tidying up the sheds, and carrying out machinery maintenance.

Tomorrow looks like being a better day, and I hope to feed greens, and spray tees with herbicide.

Spring feed on greens.

April 29th 2008

After yesterdays rain, today couldnt have been better. Lots of warm Spring sunshine, and plenty to do on the golf course. One thing that has definitely kicked off, is some growth, everywhere is looking rather more lush than I would like. I did not get a chance to stimp greens yesterday or today but I can imagine they will be hovering around the low 8 ft mark and we may need to start rolling frequently again.

The main job today was to apply our Spring granular feed. We put down Scotts Invigorator 4:0:8 at 20g per sqm. This was chosen because the Nitrogen component comes from Ammonia Sulphate, and it has the Potassium required to rectify our Potassium deficit in the rootzone. We are not looking for a surge of growth, more an improvement to sward density. In total we used 300kg for our 21 putting surfaces and 1 point to note is that the 17th green was only applied at 10g per sqm.

Elsewhere on the course, Davie and Scott managed to resume the herbicide spraying on the tees, apart from a few mechanical hitches they finished the job of blanket spraying tees in approx 4 hours. The tees will now not be cut until Friday to allow the chemical to move through the weed plants successfully.

Another large job being tackled today was to turf our nursery with big roll rolawn turf. 750sqm arrived at 9am and was offloaded by Kenny our digger driver. We started laying about 11am and managed approx 200sqm before 2pm.

Routine work included sandpatching fairways, cutting greens, changing holes, raking bunkers ( a few had been washed out),cutting aprons, machinery maintenance (setting up 3 hydrojects for tomorrow) and an irrigation repair at our 13th green.

Open Championship Course Roadtrip.

July 8th 2008

Thats me just back from a two day visit to three of the Open championship venues on the West Coast of England. Gordon Moir, Gordon Mckie, Allan Patterson and myself all ventured down early on Monday morning to visit Royal Lytham, Royal Birkdale and Royal Liverpool golf clubs. The purpose of the visit was to see the Open preparations at Birkdale, also to see Martin Hawtree's newly designed green at 17, see results of Primo Maxx in use at Lytham and to get a game of golf at Hoylake.

First stop was Lytham and as you can see it was wet. Apparently it has been raining daily for the last few weeks here and you can see that from the colour of the course. We also got to see the area for the new green at the far end of the course. What impressed me most about Lytham was the density of bent / fescue / poa turf on the greens and how effective spraying off all grass from revetted faces could be.

Our thanks goto Course Manager Paul for his informative trip round his excellent course.

Next stop was to sunnier Birkdale. Again Birkdale has experienced days of heavy rain showers which has resulted in a slightly greener and softer course than manager Chris would like. We walked the course from the 1st to the 18th and were all amazed at the condition and the ferocity of the course which is quite simply the best I have ever seen.

While going round the course, we came apon a golfer practising. Phil Mickleson no less!! He spent a good half an hour on the 17th, learning every inch of the highly contoured green, recently designed by Martin Hawtree.

We travelled to Hoylake and setup camp in a travel lodge where we talked late into the night about growth regulators, cutting heights and all things greenkeeping, over a few pints of ale!.

Next day we set off early to meet course manager Craig and to play golf at the challenging and immaculate Royal Liverpool golf club. I have retired from golf (losing 20 balls at the castle will do that to a person!!) so Craig filled the 4th spot. The teams for the day were Gordon Moir and Allan against Gordon McKie and Craig....

Gordon McKie started off extremely well, with questions being asked re handicaps and bandits....however Gorodon Moir spent some time getting aquainted with Hoylakes rough....

This was an extremely informative trip and I have taken away many thoughts on cutting heights of greens and use of primo etc. May I thank all the dedicated course managers that made our trip very worthwhile and hope to return the favour in the future.