It's not looking good for the weekend's golf with today's forecast almost exact calling for  showers increasing late in the morning to rain in the afternoon.  At least we got 13 days without rain which last happened in December.  Today's rain will definitely get us to the somewhat unwanted figure of 100 inches since November 1.

The warmer weather earlier this week gave us what will be the last kick of growth you would think and we are quite well poised as we enter winter.  From where we were at the start of April turf wise it is a big relief to be honest.  As mentioned previously lots of rain means lots of cloud which means less growth potential.

The new pump station was commissioned over the past week and still has some tweaking to be done but we can already see much improved water distribution throughout the courses.  Although there is still some of the old pipe network in use the new pump station cycles about every one and a half hours.  Prior to the commencement of the irrigation install our old pumps cycled every 8 minutes due to the number of unseen / known leaks that we had out there.

The irrigation install has continued with 9R in progress.  They will be there much of next week and it is planned to move to the short range / practice greens area the week after the Fanning golf day.  This will mean the short range will be closed to practice and once we move to the practice greens the new " target green " as we call it, will become a practice putting green only. 

This rainfall is now getting completely ridiculous which is a line I am sure I have penned before.  The courses just can't dry out at present although we are lucky with a large percentage of courses closed at the moment due to the wet conditions.  Considering we are regarded as a "dry" course it must be bad elsewhere.  Even courses with wall to wall cart paths are closed.  The prediction for the next 24 hours isn't good but hopefully it's patchy and misses us for a change.  The call on carts will be made as usual before 5.30am tomorrow morning.

Despite the obvious wet conditions this was the first social group out this morning who decided to almost park on 10R green and then proceeded to drive over 11R tee.  Sometimes I wish I could just pull the key on people with such little respect.

No idea?

The irrigation install continued on 12R this week and once finished there we will do 1R green on the way past as we move on to 9R.  Before the irrigation install we took the opportunity to remove the front right bunker on 12R.  It has been earmarked for removal since the course improvement plan of 2014 but a 4 inch irrigation main ran right through the middle of it which would have impacted totally on the removal.  Now that the main is redundant we were able to do the work.  It will allow for much greater access to and from the green and help spread the wear in that area.  It will be turfed next week and will take a few weeks to settle given the cooler climate at the moment.

No longer there.

 

The pump shed has finally been primed and is ready for commissioning and being bought online which will happen on Tuesday next week.  To start with we will be utilising the existing power supply until the new cables are laid and there is a total of 3 kilometres to be laid so that will be a process in itself.

I am off for a weeks R & R so no Blog post next week.

 

"Here comes the rain again" is the title of a song that pretty much sums up the past 6 months at Coolie Tweed and today was no exception.  20mm overnight and then a further 6mm in the scuds that keep coming our way during the day, which doesn't sound much, but in our current situation it certainly is.  Our rainfall total since November 1 is 2,404mm which converts to just over 96 inches.  The courses are just saturated.

We were able to get some fertiliser out on greens on both courses earlier this week and got some advantage out of the last warm days we will probably get as we head into winter.  Mowing heights on the River greens have already been lifted and this is to help the plant survive the low light conditions of winter and also for the shaded greens to try and keep as much leaf as possible on them.  The tees will get fertilised (weather permitting) on Monday and the mowing height will be lifted for the winter which is routine practice for this time of year, again in an attempt to hold some cover.

The irrigation install was interrupted by the public holiday on Monday then the rain so after a really good Tuesday / Wednesday they hit a wall and so are still on 13R and will finish that early next week before moving to 12R.   The vast majority of the PE pipe joins are welded and that can't be done in the rain which with our past months doesn't help.  Hopefully one day we will get to use the system!!??

Autumn / winter is Poa annua germination time so we have started trialing some products for control.  It has been so wet that some of the Poa plants from last year have survived and are still evident at the moment so they were the areas treated this week. 

A fairly reasonable week weather wise after a very wet weekend and then in came the rain again on Friday.  It doesn't take much to wet us up with the water table sitting so high.

On the irrigation front, 14R is nearly finished after a washout on Friday.  There will be no work on the Queensland Public Holiday on Monday and they will finish 14R off on Tuesday before moving to 13R. 

We were able to get some sand on 12W fairway turf on Thursday so the rain was quite welcome for that and also for some fertiliser that got put out on selected tees to try and juice them up for winter.  The cold temperatures today (it was under 20 degrees in the compound this morning for the first time this year) will really start to slow the turf right down so every little bit of growth helps.

A couple of "innovations" of sorts, one of which I certainly don't want to become common here and the other needs never to appear in Australia.

Not sure who decided putting a nail through a plastic tee to extend its life was a good idea but the mower certainly didn't appreciate it.  The size of some "soft" spikes and tees in general are bad enough but this was something else!!

Even has a spiral effect to help get it in the ground I guess!!

 

The nail won!!  A big chunk out of the middle of the bedknife.

The second innovation is the latest "golf car" to hit courses in the USA.  Apparently they are very common, particularly down in Florida.  Please not here!!

I guess it is air conditioned!!

 

I know I have talked about this before but one of the things a golfer can do on the course is to rake a bunker properly out of respect of your fellow players and also the staff who prep them for play, which with the amount of rain and washouts we have been getting has been an arduous task to say the least.  Two great examples below following the Members comp this past Wednesday.  They don't even require a caption with the top one on 10R greenside and the bottom one 13W greenside.  Almost all the damage on 10 was the work of one person.

 

Certainly not the forecast we were looking for for the upcoming long weekend especially after it was updated at 11.30 this morning with a 95% chance of more than 100mm.  Let's hope they got that completely wrong!! 

We were finally able to get some sand slits into 12W fairway which I have been trying to get done since TCAlfred.  The trenches we dug for the slits were only 300mm deep but had groundwater in the bottom of them such is the level of the water table at the moment.

The River greens have responded  well to the fertiliser application they received and certainly enjoyed the bright warm sunny conditions over the Easter weekend.  They now have an acceptable cover of grass going into winter which is a relief after the way they looked 2 weeks ago.  The West greens are also looking good moving into winter although I would have liked to get a sanding on them today but the forecast took that away.

The irrigation install is moving along and 14R should get finished next week and we then move on to 13R.  Two small parts are delaying the pump shed commissioning which should now happen in May.  We will be using the existing power supply from the old shed in the short term until a new switchboard can be installed.

TCAlfred recovery continues with stump and hanger removal ongoing.  The contractors will be off site next week and back the following and I expect all recovery works to be completed by Friday May 23.  The stump removal has been very impressive and within a few months you will barely be able to tell there was ever a tree there which given the size of the stumps is very impressive.

Probably the biggest stump @ RHS 2W tee.

 

Gawn!!

   

Finally a relatively dry week although the forecast doesn't look good.  At least there has been some sun and the River greens have responded well following a solid tine aeration and sanding earlier in the week.  All bunkers on both courses are finally in play now, awaiting the coming rain!!

On the TCAlfred clean up, the last load of mulch left the property this afternoon which is the end of that monumental task.  I will get a tonnage figure of what was taken away at some stage but it's huge to say the least.  We are still finding some trees that have ''popped'' such as the one pictured below which was one of three on 5W.  We are also finding a few more dead trees as we go and are removing them when possible.  The stump removal started this week and possibly moved a little faster than expected and the hanger removal is also in progress.  The leftover chips and logs from the stump grinding will be left stacked until there is enough for us to economically collect them.

Another root popped out.

 

We are also stockpiling some green waste down near Halfway West and there will be some more added early next week with the the woodchipper coming on site next Thursday to clean it up.  We are using that area as it has excellent access for the truck and chipper.

The last truck being loaded down next to 6R.

The tower reaching up for the hangers.

That's him just in case you can't see him.

A bit of an update on where we are at with what's been happening on the courses over the past month which has probably been the most hectic of my career.  All of the tree pile at 6R has now been mulched and will be trucked out next week.  Was there a mulch pile in the car park?  You wouldn't know now!!

Stump and hanger removal will start on Monday.  It has been estimated that the stump removal will take up to a month but as not many contractors have ever done this number of stumps in size and quantity, it's hard to know.  Holes will need to be closed or shortened while the contractors work to ensure their safety for the duration.  It has been estimated that some of the larger ones will take 3 - 4 hours to remove so it will be a slow process.  Once the contractors get up into the trees to remove the hangers they will also be able to identify potential risk trees going forward. 

In addition to the 96 trees that were totally uprooted in TCAlfred, there were many others severely damaged by falling trees near them or others just damaged structurally like the one that was split down the middle on 16R.

From a distance.

Close up.

 

The courses are incredibly wet and apart from Monday this week it has not been very good drying weather recently.  Another 10mm overnight into Friday just topped us up again.  We received 807mm of rain in March.  That's just over 32 inches.  It takes our total since November 1 to 2196mm or just shy of 88 inches.

12W fairway works area took the rain fairly well.  The area will need a couple of sand trenches put in to help move the water down the profile.  The bunker drainage needed a further upgrade this week after it was contaminated by some clay in the deluge.  The area was turfed on Monday March 3 in the middle of heavy rain and we were literally grading in front of the turf layers so some of the levels are now out a bit.  Given the rain we got later that week in TCAlfred I was amazed the turf didn't float away.  Since the area was turfed we have had 33 inches of rain in 32 days, so it’s had a fair workout!!

Irrigation install slowed again this week.  17R green and fairway are complete and some big pipe is going across 17R and rear 16R green to hook up to two mainlines there.  There is still some drainage repair required at the front of 18R tee but the high tides and water table has made it difficult this past week.  The pump station commissioning is imminent which is rather exciting as that will be when we get some really good flow rates happening.  Not that irrigation has been at the forefront of our thoughts this summer.

The West greens got a solid tine aeration yesterday to get some oxygen down to the roots and the River greens will be done during next Tuesdays closure. The River greens will also receive a sanding and granular fertiliser to try and promote some growth  Mowing heights on the River greens will then be lifted to try and get some cover going into winter as they are desperately thin given the lack of sunlight this summer due to the constant rain.