A very busy week on the courses with just about a full crew and lower player numbers allowing a lot of work to be achieved. We were able to get the collars on the River course scarified and also got the first mowing on the River greens following renovation.  As I have said before it is very important to get the first mowing done whilst dry which we were able to do on Tuesday afternoon and then followed up on Thursday with another dry cut which was indeed a bonus. Sand and reel mowers really don’t go together so it is very hard to maintain a quality of cut and that’s why the greens are quite stripy in appearance.  We were also able to get the West greens de-thatched in the dry on Tuesday as well which is also a bonus.

The new roughcutters are certainly getting a workout following a surge in growth with the ground moisture and heat and humidity we have been getting.  We normally use mulching blades on them which help literally ‘’smash up’’ the leaves but unfortunately they are not currently available as are so many things that are affected by freight delays so there are still heaps of leaves left on the ground.  We do have a sweeper that we could use but that would fill within minutes and require constant emptying which makes it totally unproductive and then we have the issue of disposing of the stockpiled leaves.

I said last week that irrigation problems come in threes but unfortunately that was just last week and another three appeared this week with a major repair required on 10W fairway and luckily we only needed a relatively small hole to access the pipe. All three repairs this week required the system to be drained of water and therefore we need to fire it up again and re-pressurise the lines which takes quite some time and that is why you quite often see hoses around the course just running into rough areas. 

A fair bit of weed control has also been conducted particularly on the West green surrounds and it is obviously noticeable by the associated leaf burn that will recover in ten days or so.  We are also having some interesting results so far with a new product that has been trialled on River fairways 6, 8, 11 and 13 for the control of Blue Couch and Kikuyu.  Both are quite difficult weeds to entirely eradicate whilst not damaging the preferred turf and playing surface.  A bit of a watch this space situation.

And an end of an era in the clubhouse garden with the retirement of our clubhouse gardener Eric. He has been with us since 2005 and has pretty much made the garden his own in that time. Similar to Len Korn, I don’t remember Eric ever ringing in sick in his time with us and he has been a valued employee throughout. So if you get the chance to see Eric in the garden next week please take the time to thank him for his work and wish him well in retirement.