February Work

180 ladies can't be wrong.........can they ?

We have had some fantastic feedback about the course conditioning for the Summer Cup, by all means a very successful preparation for this event.

Just goes to show only a green keeper can please and satisfy this many women at once. ha ha

So where do we go from here, we only have 3 weeks before the next club major event, the 2 day Capel Classic sponsored by Scott Park Homes, our goals for this event are the same as for the Cup, to present the course in the most positive fashion possible with a focus on turf quality and conditioning, and once again peaking the greens to run true and smooth with a little extra pace.

We are going to do this by backing off the greens a touch for the next week or so, not much, not even 1/2 mm, (it is amazing what just a slight increase in height can do to turf health in a short space of time), before ramping them up again for the Classic. A decision to verti cut or lightly groom will be made by the end of the week and a possible light dust in for next Monday in order to achieve this.

During the "rest" period we will be applying granular gypsum to help them along, we will continue the spoon feeding fertiliser program which has held us in good shape since the commencement of the hot weather, providing .028kg N per 100m2 weekly to sustain healthy but not excessive growth, along with some seaweed extract and potassium for strength to help with combating the stresses we place on the greens and the temperature stress which have thank fully cooled to around 31 degrees.

The tees will be given a granular feed, to assist in divot recovery and the fairways will be given a foliar feed next week, the reason for this is we do not want to cause excessive growth in the fairways which means more time consuming mowing than we are already doing, but we still want some growth and colour. The other reason is the fairways will be granular fertilised  late March as an end of season fertilisation to get them through winter. 

Of course the back 9 manual irrigation system will be in full operation and the hoses out once more, eating into the available course maintenance time. 

Other behind the scenes work including machine maintenance and a bit of paper work, organising the upcoming March greens renovations, normal course grooming and set up, will keep us busy over the next week before the focus returns to groom groom groom the course including the dreaded bunker edges. 

Other work we will  be taking the opportunity to do is apply some post emergent crab grass control, which tho much less in the greens than previous years still presents a huge problem in some greens more than others.

crab grass

 It is also getting time to start applying pre emergent winter grass control and we are heading towards doing that as well, tho we are waiting for the temperatures to drop a little more before we do. 

Not a bad workload for just the 4 us on staff. 

A reminder to members...Greens renovations on the 10th and 11th of March, we desperately need volunteers to assist in the clean up and removal of cores, many hands make light work and hopefully we will have another great turn out like previous years.