Yet another short week with Anzac Day but at least the turf growth has slowed so not too much impact on the courses.  The wind has finally died down so a fairly big clean up on Friday in amongst the hordes of play has the courses looking and playing really well.  More fertiliser out this week and some more plant protectant products to get the turf as healthy as possible for the upcoming winter.  The constant showers over the past week and some good temperatures has the turf still just moving along.

One of the never ending issues all golf greens have whether they are bent grass or warm season couchgrass, is encroachment from other grasses in the collars. We are fortunate in someways here that we have 328 on the River course that is quite an open sward and allows encroaching grasses to move through them quite easily whereas the TifEagle on the West course is a much tighter sward and makes it a lot more difficult for the foreign grass to encroach. This is a very good demonstration of one of TifEagles strengths.  Most of the encroachment is via stolons, that is they move above ground, but occasionally, you get a rhizome and they move underground and then just pop up as per the photo at the rear of the 10WG.  Rhizomes are the ones that will cause us the most grief, as there is a runner going all the way back to the edge of the green in this instance, and could pop up again anywhere along that route.  Anyone who has hand weeded a garden bed to remove couch or kikuyu will know all about rhizomes.

Rhizome ''popping'' ten inches from green edge.