Verti - drain greens

Drastic problems call for drastic measures I've said it before and I will say it again. Our greens have a major issue of sediment just under the surface.

Well as Iv'e mentioned before in this blog (and talking to those interested) about the continuing problems of having the sediment layer still being present just under the surface of the turf  and thus giving grief to watering, fertilizing,and weed control.

We have decided that even though it is not a good time to be doing this we have to verti drain the greens.

Our  situation is that  the benefits out way the negatives. The we water just sits on top of the sediment and it is very hard to pulse water with the system not fully set up at the moment, so we have decided to
 verti-drain the greens with  8mm solid tynes and go down to 150mm then once we run the greens mower over them it is hardly noticeable. Now we can get the water and other products down to the root zone also the green is much softer. So far we have done 1,2,3,4,5,7,14,15,16 and plan to do the rest over the next week.


Once all greens are done we will do the tees.

We had our first light frost this morning , if the fosts get heavier we won't be able to mow or due off the greens as if done it will kill off that area and we will have no way of getting it back untill spring.

The top photo is the verti-drain on the 5th green and the bottom photo is of the 4th green just before we ran the greens mower over the surface to smooth it out.

We are also continuing to fill the trenches and turf the bad areas, we will be doing allot of testing of sprinklers and programming so I apologise in advance if a sprinkler pops up near you, we will endeavor to do most of this work early in the mornings so as not to affect play.

Well till next time keep swinging...pete

Turfed Areas

You will have buy now noticed some turfed areas on the 13th fairway right hand side and this morning we did some on the right hand side of 17th fairway and a little near the 18th tee. We are going to attempt to do 2 pallets of turf at the beginning of the week. This will cover up and repair some of the larger areas where the trench fill was piled up.

The irrigation system is all installed on the new section, we are now upgrading the old system so all the course is the same once this is done we can go around and check each sprinkler and level it and start watering.

Until the upgrade is finished we will not be able to water fairways or greens. We will manually water if required.

We also are continuing to fill in the trenches and by mixing in the seed is helping a lot by not getting too much wash after rain.

Most of the end of this week will be spent on the golf expo areas and get them tidied up.

 till next time ...keep swinging  pete

rain rain go away

Well I can't remember the last time we didn't get some rain during a week. and boy has it made things tough, with the sediment from the floods just under the leaf surface it doesn't take much to make things slippery.

The Irrigation installation is virtually complete, with testing and leveling still ongoing, the trenches have had sand and seed mix put into them and we still have many to do, along with re topping up where they have sunk this will be ongoing to spring but we are making progress .

The irrigation pump station is up and running , with the last pump in and getting repaired at this time so all four pumps are in as new condition.

There is only the upgrade to the old system to be done and we can then connect it up to the TORO site pro controller thus giving us more efficient watering and saving allot of hours from moving hoses.

The Verti-drain machine has been out when conditions allow us to use it and time available so far we have done the 7th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 15th, 17th,18th, the 15th has had its bare patches verti-drained and sanded and seeded and is coming back well, this week we ran the vert-drain through the water holding hollows on the 13th to help them drain.

We plan for next week to get into a few more bunkers and expose the drain and flush the sediment out so they can work( this is only a temporary fix) as we did on the left hand side of the 4th a few weeks ago we hope to get the 1st 13th and 4th right hand side done.

Well thats about it for today till next time keep swinging pete