A windy and messy week on the courses with the Gum trees losing a lot of leaves and bark which is natural for this time of year.  At least we don't have deciduous trees like the southern States where they really do make a mess.  A friend of mine on a course with such trees commented to me once that ''people who say they love the colours of autumn have never worked on a golf course raking them up''!!

The West fairways got fertilised as planned on Tuesday and for a little while on Tuesday afternoon it looked like we were going to get an unexpected storm but it unfortunately fizzled.  So we had to rely on the irrigation system to water it in which isn't perfect but that's the way it has to be.  The motorised buggy traffic also breaks a lot of the fertiliser up which again isn't perfect but unless we close for a few days, can't be avoided.  The problem with the buggy traffic is that it breaks the coating that is on each individual granule and releases the fertiliser earlier than required. They also cause a bit of a burn as they drive over the fairway as per the picture below.

 

Wheel burn on 7W fairway.

Some even got picked up and tracked acoss 16W green

 

The recovery of the unwanted green couch in 1R green really accelerated with the warmth of last weekend to the point that we are not going to be able to control it.  As the picture of the rhizome showed last week the depth of where the shoots are coming from makes it impossible to hand weed them out.  After consultation with Golf Management Committee it has been decided to excavate the perimeter of the green out and refill with fresh material as per the operation on the West greens and then stolonise.  This will remove all the rhizomes and ensure that it is weed free.  These works are proposed to commence on Monday December 30. 

And I was reading some old golf journals during the week and came across this classic photo of a very classy follow through.  What really caught my eye though was the footwear??!!

Good follow through.

 

Not on my greens thanks!!

 

 

We got another uneven result from the recent application of growth regulator to the fairways which was done in the last week of October.  We had a problem with the previous application and thought it was solved but alas it wasn't.  The difficult aspect is that it takes two weeks for the result to become evident so it is hard to know what has and is happening but we think we are on to it this time.  It is frustrating as we have used the same machine / technology since 2004 and never had the problem before and have probably sprayed eight times a year since then.

18W fairway streaks.

 

1R green has put on some leaf at last but as mentioned last week is much slower than expected.  We did a little bit of investigation this week by removing some plugs from the green and unfortunately found some rather juicy couchgrass rhizomes 50mm under the surface.  We can only try and keep painting herbicide on to any new invasive shoots while we wait for the 328 grass to start moving and cover in.

Rhizomes next to arrows.

 

The weather is now warming up to the stage that we should start to get some growth in the fairways and to assist that the West course fairways will be fertilised next Tuesday weather permitting.  The extra motorised buggy traffic with the Covid rules and extra play has really put some strain on the fairways in particular with wear at an all time high in my time here.

 

8mm in the storm last Saturday afternoon / evening was certainly most welcome.  Despite all the predictions of a wet summer we are still pretty dry at the moment.  As mentioned previously the constant overnight wind has quite an adverse effect on the operation of the sprinklers so a couple of calm nights would be much appreciated.  Some of the roughs, particularly Kikuyu areas have started to grow, and I was asked this week why we don't apply growth regulators to the roughs.  Well on some of the shorter rough we can and do but on the longer rough there is what is known as a ''spray shielding effect'' which is when the length of the grass prevents the spray solution from being able to penetrate through the canopy and make contact with the leaves as required.

The grassing of the edges at 1R green are progressing much slower than anticipated.  There is also the problem of rhizomes of the foreign couchgrass now popping their heads up as can be seen in the photo below.  It appears that we got an excellent kill of all the surface leaf / plant matter but as the rhizomes tunnel under the surface then sprout we weren't able to make contact with them.  The one below is a good 75cm into the green.  We have been painting them to try and control them but time will tell if they get too invasive again.  The ball in the top photo is next to a shoot from a rhizome and the lower photo is a close up, which also shows how much new 328 growth there is which is hard to see from standing so that is encouraging.  It just needs to grow!!

Distance from the edge.

Close up of the new shoot.