Greens Update - Autumn 2008

COURSE UPDATE

Throughout August and September we have continued with the treatment on the greens as per STRI guide lines.

We were fortunate to have had two priority periods during these two months.

August was a full five days when the weather, as for most of the “summer”, was not on our side; however by juggling the lads working hours we completed the scheduled programme, with satisfactory results. Each green was verti-drained, using 12mm tines, over seeded and top dressed, which was brushed in.

September was a shorter priority period of three days, again the weather was not kind to us, but again we accomplished our objective of winter slitting, over seeding and top dressing all of the greens.

There has been a marked improvement in the grasses on the greens including the first and fourth greens where the repaired areas of turf are now blending in and should be more receptive next year and year on for the next couple of years.

Week commencing Monday 29th September we started to scarify the fairways but abandoned this operation after two holes due to poor ground conditions; the rubbish dragged out was too wet to blow away with the mechanical blower, so Chris Hulme went for the second option of verti-draining the fairways which fitted in very well, time wise as we already had the attachment fitted to a tractor having verti-drained all the tees. We have scarified and verti-drained all the winter greens, they needed doing, but we are hoping they will not be used too often throughout the winter.

We are well into the programme of cleaning ditch and pond banks. The attachment we have hired in, can be operated using the mechanical digger, thus releasing the tractors for other works, the other advantage of this attachment is, by altering the settings, which is a fairly simple job, we can then trim hedges using the digger again for the power unit.

At this point I would express my sincere thanks to the club members volunteer group, who have and are still doing sterling work, releasing the green staff to carry on with the course maintenance work. Chris says that their contribution has been fantastic.

The volunteer group is made of:- Mike Heapy, Graham Blackledge, Jerry Cutler, Derek Chadwick, Len Wood, John Dixon, Mike Stanistreet, Peter Sykes and Last but not least Hilary Tarleton.

Once again thank you for your time and efforts.

Foot note:-

You may be interested in the following, with regard to our “summer weather”.

The average rainfall for June, July and August is 226 mm, the same period this year we had 327 mm. and in the corresponding period 2007 we had 357 mm. With these figures, it is not “rocket science” to work out that maintaining a golf course that is built on predominately old river bed silt and clay is no easy task. We would ask for a little patience at times.

J. Barry (Bazza!) Weston.
Green Chairman.