One good news story for the week is that the Poa annua is still dying in greens 5 and 6W.  Another application this week has set the Poa back even further although there are still some plants that haven't had as good a kill.  The disappointing story for the week was the storm and rain that rolled through last Saturday morning for round one of the club championships.  It's severely interrupted our preparations for the round with more rain falling than we have had for months and meant we could only get a couple of greens mown or rolled.  The wind and constant showers made for a fairly unpleasant day on the golf course no doubt.  Fortunately this week we have had a better run with the weather although the wind has the place pretty messy out there with a lot of leaves in bunkers which will be hard to move given we can’t operate blowers that early on a Saturday morning.

I have had a couple of members ask me about the ploughing for the installation of the irrigation system I mentioned the other week and just how much damage will there be from the installation.  The term ploughing relates to the operation being similar to a drainage method known as mole ploughing but surface disruption is minimal.  The top photo below shows an irrigation line ‘’ploughed’’ across a fairway with the bottom arrow indicating where the pipe has been ‘’ploughed in’’ and the top arrow indicating some minor tyre mark damage.  The bottom photo shows the only real excavation on playing areas will be where the sprinklers themselves are installed.  Mainlines will generally be located down the side of fairways and they will be installed in an open trench dug by either a ditchwitch type of machine or a small excavator.  Given we are installing over the top of the existing irrigation system there will be some more excavation required when we encounter existing underground services that are still required, particularly power. 

Minimal damage.

Sprinkler location circled.

The photo below shows the extent of damage when the ploughing installation has been done on bare ground with no turf which probably wonudn't happen here but it's a good indication of how little damage is done.