Friday, October 21, 2011

Week 42 update

Well another week done, and dusted.
firstly a big thanks to the volunteers who have been coming out on Mondays at 1.00 pm to help with the irrigation trenches, this week we got 2 trailers out. this done all the12th fairway and the bad ones in the gully on the 10th.
thanks again guys for your efforts if you have a hour to spare come along and give a hand.
we had some clean up this week of drains and storm grates, we also put out turf on patches on the 1st the 2nd and 3rd.
bunker faces were all fixed up on Monday, and weed control in the bunkers throughout the week
the back 9 tees got verti-cut , and we continue to feed and treat the flood patches and we are seeing some good growth in these areas and these patches are getting less and less. and with the fertilizer and amendments the other fairways are thickening up and providing good turf for golf play.
next week we will get the verti-drain out and do some more areas.
till next time keep swinging....pete

Thursday, October 13, 2011

verti-cut tees

This week we managed to find time after the storm clean up to verti-cut the front 9 tees. We plan to do the back 9 next week. this task soaks up allot of man hours as the tee has to be dry before we start then the tee top is verti-cut we usually  we go 2 ways, then a clean up mow comes along after the tee is verti-cut and this usually removes 2 or 3 catchers of thatch,
 The tees mower  then follows and gives the tee top a final cut .to do 9 holes with out any hold ups takes approx  4 hours so with 3 staff tied up thats a total of 12 manhours and the reason we do this is to remove thatch from the tee, the verti-cutting promotes lateral growth of the turf, it assists in leveling and thins out the sword of the turf which will provide long term a better tee surface.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

First mow after Reno

Well we have set a new record with the first cut on the greens 7 days after renovation.
Today we got the rest of the bunkers faced and cleaned up, along with allot of the mowing done late this afternoon.
The greens continue to do well and with that first light cut going well, we will cut them again on Tuesday afternoon then let them rest for Wednesday then hopefully get to lower them a bit for Thursday.
please note at this stage we can only mow when the leaf is dry as any dew on the plant will cause the sand to stick to the rollers and sit on top of the plant. so this weekend they will not be mowed.
but the way they are coming back it wont take long to be good again.
This is why it is so important to have the turf growing fast coming into renovations as it cuts down the recovery time significantly .pete

Monday, October 10, 2011

The greens on Friday came up well after their rub in with the finishing mat.
The storm on Saturday has put a spanner in the works with most of today (Monday) taken up with repairing bunkers, picking up debris, and cleaning up storm damage and with more storms predicted for Thursday and Friday it looks like we will loose allot of time to this repair work this week. pete

Friday, October 7, 2011

Reno time again

Well without having the use of contractors this renovation it has been a testing time to get equipment together to do the renovations at all. a big thanks to all those who came to our aid in getting this together.
also thanks to the ground staff for coming in on the Sunday afternoon (giving up the footy grand final) to set up the machines and familiarize themselves with the operations of the equipment which had only just got here, thus giving us a good start on the Monday.
pictured here is the scarrifier and corer we used