CAPEL GOLF COURSE MAINTENANCE

Pretty quiet on course over the last week with only run of the mill news and nothing of any real significance to report. Looking ahead the same can be said. We are concentrating our efforts on removing fallen Branches,  highlighting tree roots and low branches in the Bush prior to the first Bush cut of the season a process we go through for the safety of the operators and protect the equipment. Bush mowing has commenced and normally takes 2 weeks to complete. We are also spraying Glyphosate around fixtures and areas we cant manoeuvre the out front mower.  We will be running at 75% staff levels over the next 3 weeks with leave and TAFE absence, so when I say its quiet on course I guess it isn't really we are still being kept extremely busy! The green staff sponsor day is this coming Thursday, get your pitch repairers ready, your divot repair technique polished but most of all we hope all enjoy the competition sponsored by the greens...

The recent weather has been nothing short of spectacular, the golfing gods providing perfect conditions for the ladies championships and all our other events, so many consecutive days of blue sunny skies we were forced to irrigate some greens during the week, a rare occasion during the winter months. With the ladies championships played on Monday and Wednesday for the 2 weeks it has been pretty quiet on course as far as our major winter works goes, some increased grooming practices to have the course in condition as would be expected for the championships our priority. Once the championships were underway we focused on off "course work" so not to disrupt play, machine maintenance was one key area, but the main focus was on removing dead trees near our sand pit for safety reasons during times when operating equipment in the area, another task was cleaning around the 12th tee during breaks in play. With the championships over on Wednesday we resumed our winte...

After a delayed start to our planed winter projects we have managed to complete a couple of the big time consuming tasks this week. We installed the first stage drain line for the 11th surrounds, with a capture pit at the front of the green, we will be using a  hired trencher for the deeper work to extend the drain line away from play at a later time when we can put the trencher to a full days work in other areas as well to make full use of the available hire time. As the front of the green is much lower than the surrounding area we need to dig the trench a lot deeper to achieve the minimum 1:100 fall required for effective draining.. The one project I was pleased to mark off was the 18 fairway irrigation lines, with the flow rate severely reduced through these pipes it was one of the more urgent projects to attend before the irrigation season. A time consuming task as we first had to locate pipes, (no mean feat with plans not entirely accurate), locate the ...

This week we managed to make a start on our winter works to do list, after losing just the one day to course clean up from the latest front and also the WA golf Junior event held on Wednesday. Remedial drainage work to the approach on 15 green and side of 14 green was completed this week, the front of 15 green has been consistently wet through winter over the years and also at times during the irrigation season, causing poor quality turf in the area. During the week we installed a mini herringbone drain pattern with 80mm slotted Ag pipe and a natural soak well to alleviate the problem. Herringbone Drain line After digging  and discovering a 2 inch layer of Blue metal dust (road base) creating an impervious layer that prevents water draining freely under the whole area, and an heavily iron oxidised (irrigation water) upper soil profile from slow drainage, I am less confident the drain line in itself will be ...

Another week, another front came through bringing with it another 40mm rain, wind gusts up to 80km/hr bringing down another 3 trees and plenty of small debris across the course requiring clearing.       It is the small debris that consumes the time, you could not putt through the below mess on the 11th green    and we cannot mow greens with it there either, it all must be cleared along with bunker washout repair, path washouts etc before we can turn our attention to other projects / tasks.   It can be very frustrating for the crew going through the cleanup process only for another front to come through requiring us to go through it all again, the latest accounted for a total of 70 labour hours this week dedicated to debris clearing.   Our winter works program delayed another week. With the amount and frequency of rain, green approaches are holding a great deal of moisture,   the blue lines are   in place as a remind...

One task we have been doing more than we would like over the past few weeks is clearing fallen banksia trees and repairing washouts, cold fronts bringing rain and wind never ends well for the weak rooted banksias with 8 requiring removal over the past 2 weeks. The same can be said for bunker and path washouts.   That said we much prefer clearing the big stuff as we are better equipped for the job to get it cut and out of the way rather than the small debris often left after a cold front pushes through, one such example was last week which covered all greens with small debris requiring clearing before we could mow and set up for the days play, 3 hours and 4 trailer loads of debris later the greens were cleared and then on to tees, bunkers and fairways, we lose the planed works we had intended to do cleaning up the mess instead. The ugly part of winter has arrived and with it you will notice a few climate forced changes with the course. Our war...

I knew it has been a while since I updated but it wasn’t till it was pointed out to me that I realised it has been so long, 7 weeks, just proves the old saying – Time flies when you’re having fun busy working. So what’s been keeping me away from the blog and on the job these past 7 weeks ?       Firstly we welcome Sarah to the team as our new 1 st year apprentice, Sarah was by far the standout candidate for the position and we wish her well for the coming years learning the trade, please make her feel welcome and understand she is very much in the learning stage of her new position. The first 4 weeks can be overwhelming for any young new apprentice, learning the various safe work practices and procedures along with the operation of plant to a satisfactory standard, this doesn’t happen overnight, some tasks initially take a while longer to complete till the new worker gains the experience and confidence that only time and training can achieve. During the time ...