A very busy two weeks on the courses with the West greens having a mini renovation last Monday week.  The granular fertiliser that was applied has had the desired effect and the greens have responded and are growing quite well.  The extra leaf slows the speed down somewhat but the benefit is that the turf is very healthy and in good shape to get groomed up for the upcoming Pro am.

The dryness continues and once again we were hand watering tees.  This was primarily to conserve water as the sprinklers don't operate efficiently in the wind and the hand water puts the water exactly where we want it to go.  The greens have also had some hand water applied for the same reason as the tees.  We have got quite a blotchy result on several fairways following the fertiliser application a couple of weeks ago with the hydrophobic soils literally repelling the water and thus not allowing the fertiliser to move through and release evenly through the profile.  A good fall of rain will fix the problem and hopefully that will happen sooner than later.

The big job this week was excavating the outer edges of 1R green where the encroachment had occurred.  The job went without a hitch and the areas were stolonised and planted on Wednesday with material harvested from the central part of the green to ensure uniformity.  It was basically the same operation as we did on the West greens with all the soil profile down to the drainage gravel layer removed and replaced with fresh sand which ensures all non desirable material is removed.  To date on the West greens there has been no re-growth of unwanted grasses and I would expect the same with 1R.  The difficulty will be keeping the foreign Couch in the collar from invading as it does so readily on 13R green.  The 328 is such an open turf that it allows the runners to invade very easily compared with the TifEagle on the West that is such a tight surface.  The weather is now on our side with good temperatures evident which will assist in a fast recovery.  

Excavation @ 1R down to drainage layer.

 

 

 

First load of fresh sand in.

 

 

 

And the wind continues to blow which is quite usual for this time of year with the Eucalypts in particular losing a lot of leaves and also bark on a number of them.  It just makes for a very messy time with continual clean up underway.
   

18R tee almost unplayable.

 

18W fairway under leaves.

 

 

And speaking of clean up, one of the tasks we have to perform on an all too regular basis is removing illegally dumped rubbish from the levee bank road, not to mention many other areas around the course boundaries.  It's time consuming and not a very pleasant job.

Off to the waste facility.