CAPEL GOLF COURSE MAINTENANCE

Welcome to the new streamlined blog. For those like me who are techno noobs, heres a quick instruction on getting the most out of this blog. To access page specific information such as Course Care Tips, Upcoming Works etc click on the Tabs located below the picture at the top of the screen and above the normal posts. Clicking on the Tab will direct you to the page you are after. On the right side of the screen you will see a list of posts by year, month and the name of the post, if you click on the year, a list of months appear, click on the month and a list of posts made in that month appear, all you have to then do is click on the post you want to view. Below the list of posts, you will see a list of labels, these labels refer to posts with a common theme and by clicking on the label you will be directed to all the posts that share that label. I haven't completed labelling all the posts yet but I will as time permits. I hope the changes make for easier viewi...

Welcome to the weekly review for the week ending 29/6 and time is of the essence. Not allot to tell this week, which does not mean there wasn't allot of work carried out. The staff split our time 3 ways this week between Course set up, ( Greens mow, hole changing, bunkers etc) Routine course maintenance, (Fairway mowing ..yes that’s right we managed to cut fairways for the first time since the storm...and other routine maintenance that usually gets done on certain weeks/ days) and commencing the detail clean up in the bush / rough areas. By detail I mean a walk-through of the roughs picking up any remaining branches and sticks, filling in stump holes etc and finally running the Kubota slasher through for the final tidy up.   Now I ask you to keep in mind there is only 3 staff at present and only 1 Kubota Slasher, we have some 20Ha to cover for the bush / rough area so it will take time to get around the whole course and we must split our time between the 3 ways above. Time...

Will this ever happen at Capel ? Click on picture to enlarge. All 10, thats right 10, fairway mowers make one pass each fairway, don't worry if the next fairway is a few meters wider, they just add another fairway mower to the line, they had about 13 fairway mowers ready to cut the course. If you are wandering why the grass is so much greener, its because it is all cool season grass, Bentgrass (our greens), ryegrass (some of our surrounds) and poa annua, (our nemesis) are used on tee boxes and fairways; the greens are bentgrass; and the rough is Kentucky bluegrass. They can use these turf types due to the cooler climatic conditions with an averaged max of 24 degrees C. In fact Couch grass just wouldn't provide the quality of surface and would struggle due to the lower temperatures. The Olympic Club has 45 holes consisting of  2 x 18 holes, The Ocean Course and the Lakes Course (The Open played on the Lakes) and a 9 hole par 3 course. They have 50 full-time ...

We all know the obvious impacts for the course from the storm, (I am totally over that word) but there are a few not so obvious impacts which I informed the course committee of and thought the general membership should also be aware. Green Speed - The greens may run a little slower in the short term, we could not cut greens for nearly a week, we were forced to raise heights slightly, this does impact on green speeds. We have since lowered the heights but more of an impact comes from the reduced frequency of cut and will take some time to gain the condition back from regular mowing, (we are still not at pre storm frequency). In short the more often we cut, the finer the leaf, the quicker the greens, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but that is the general idea. Disease Issues - With wet weather, a mixed bag of weather conditions and lost time for some cultural practices usually completed, some disease issues are expected in greens, tees and fairways. We managed...

Back to the normal weekly updates, the storm cleanup still looms large on the list of the weekly duties. This week was slow going for the remainder of the cleanup, with Anthony at TAFE just Dean and myself on and with the course now open for play half our time is dedicated to course setup so some time is therefor taken away from the cleanup duties. Having said that, little evidence remains of the destructive storm, the damage it caused or the massive cleanup that was undertaken besides a few smouldering logs, some fair size mountains of debris ready for disposal and the odd branch about the place. We managed to finish picking up all the small debris heaps over the course, removed a few more dangerous limbs, rehabilitated some of the worst effected areas, and we even mowed tees for the weekend, a first for the last 2 weeks. Repair work to the mindless act of vandalism on the 11th was commenced  and we will see how that handy work comes out. (I did intend to take some pictures...

What a glorious day today was, blue skies sun shinning and the course open for play, the way it should be, I hope you enjoyed the day and made the most of it, unfortunately bad weather is set to return tonight / tomorrow   Forecast click here no weather warning is in place at present as the next low approaches but hail and squalls are predicted with heavy rain. This will be the last of the daily updates to let you know of progress made with the clean up, (unless crazy events dictates otherwise and wow what will I talk about now ?), with the course now open we are spending time on course set up and will be slowly returning to normal duties tho we will still be clearing debris in the short term. Today we started the practice tee and fairway clean up, we had to stop after a hydraulic problem with the tractor and we worked on the fix for that in the afternoon, we also ran the kubota over some very messy areas prior to the ladies pennants and set up the course for them. Some m...

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. The Good - Today we had around 12 volunteers, many from yesterday (did they actually go home), doing various jobs around the course to get as much completed as possible for tomorrow's opening.....Yes I did say we are opening tomorrow, (that's the good by the way).  Ladies pennants. Tidying up around the monster trees, dangerous tree removal and more high reach work were all attended along with some more raking of small debris around the course, Thanks Di it is appreciated, (if anyone sees Di snoozing by a tree, rake in hand leave her be) she has been in every day raking this week. The course is now ready enough to open, not perfect, actually not even great but ready enough, I would personally like to thank everyone who has helped us get this far, some have been here all week, others when they had the chance and even more after they had repaired their own damage to their properties, I don't wish to single out any particular person...