Another amazing week of spring weather with just about perfect conditions for golf and the golf courses to match it.  The dry spell certainly continues and we are just about at full scale irrigation at night at the moment with some supplemental localised hand watering needed on greens on both courses in the early morning.  It's an incredible contrast when you consider that the southern sea side resort Lorne in Victoria actually had snow fall on Tuesday this week and the maximum temperature has hovered around 10 degrees all week.

The weed control in the fairways is ongoing and another application will be due next week.  When you look at the differing results on the Blue Couch it shows just how many different varieties we have out there.  Elsewhere on the courses and the broadleaf weeds in the roughs have also been sprayed.  In contrast to other years the level of Clover in the roughs is at an all time low which would be interesting to know why whereas the Cotula has gone crazy this year.  Weather conditions and the golfing program finally aligned and we were able to get the River greens sprayed to eradicate some of the wintergrass that had appeared.  The patches of "green" couch in the greens will be spotted, once again when conditions are suitable and then replaced with fresh turf after their renovation in November.

Next week will see the removal of exposed tree roots from fairways.  This is the operation where we use a backhoe with a ripper attachment to hook under the roots and pull them out.  It does cause quite some surface disruption but is very necessary from the playability and mowing point of view.

Other than just general course maintenance there is a lot of behind the scenes preparations for the front 9 West greens project that starts on Tuesday October 3 going on.  Most of the hardware we require is now on site and the turf is in great condition at the turf farm from all reports.  I will be venturing up there in the next week just to check it out in person.  Now we just need the weather to cooperate.   

And always nice to get a compliment for the work we do with the following arriving in an email today;

The star of the show, and the Belle of the ball is the Green Keepers, I have been to all the name dropping courses over the world, and I will go as far to say, your course, is as good if not better than all of them.  The credit must go to the course staff for helping us have a good walk, a great game and a tonne of fun.

Please pass this on to whoever is in charge of the course staff.