2nd bunker area turfed

Qpex this morning , with a 7.30 shotgun and having 550 square meters of turf to get down and roped off before hit off along with greens mowed, bunkers raked, all signs up betting hole and straight drive lines done...talk about cutting if fine.. but we got there...just.
The second hole now has the Right hand side bunker refurbished with new drainage and drains upgraded for better flow, and changed over the sand to a better quality sand, the Left hand side bunker has been totally redesigned and rebuilt with bunker matting throughout the whole bunker.
The turf will be let to grow so as to meander down among the rock wall, and this area has been marked out in orange with a drop zone at the front left side of the fairway. The bunker is in play but new turf a drop zone area.
The 18th tee continues to do well, it has started to send its roots down, and if the warm weather keeps up that will quicken the process, although we did have a light frost this morning, we will continue to asses this tee once the roots have settled it we will give it a light topdress and fill in the holes made by the deer walking on it. then once that firms up introduce play on it so possibly 6 weeks it all depends on the weather.
till next time .....keep swinging.. pete

mid july

Just a quick one today we have been very busy filling trenches and rebuilding the social mens18th tee. This has been levelled and made allot bigger, when back in play it will have the mens white markers and ladies black markers on the tee top.

The tee will take a while to put its roots down so hopefully we don't get any storms before then.

Today we are starting work on the 2nd green bunkers and waterway edge along the 2nd green pathway so for this week we have cut in a temporary green.

The irrigation pump stations are all back and online, we still have a few leaks out there to be fixed and a couple of teething problems and with the computer not online yet we have been manual watering which consists of me changing the banks every half hour throughout the night ...so if I have been crabby the last few weeks I appoligise as lack of sleep will do that to you.

It was great to get some rain (14mm) this weekend, not so good for golf though and luckily not enough to overflow the creek and wash the 18th tee away although it came close, and which is the reason we have left the small dam draining..... well the excavators have just turned up, better go and fix these bunkers up... till next time ..keep swinging.... pete

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

Week 18 update

Well the mornings are starting to cool down, with the couple of short weeks we have mainly been trying to get all the mowing done.

The irrigation is being put in on the 3rd fairway and is to be finished off next week this will complete the system proper then we have to adjust the sprinklers and get stuck into filling the trenches.

The original system will receive a upgrade over the next few weeks so that the whole course is on the latest Toro Site Pro system.

The 15th fairway has been verti-drained and all greens have been feed to get them ready for the cooler weather, as some of you know we have been very short staffed over the last few months and it is good to welcome our newest team member Terrance who started at the end of last week and is fitting in well, so if you see a new face say hi and remember he is still learning the ropes.

We had a visit from the sports minister during the week, it was interesting seeing his perspective as from his last visit to now we were standing near the 15th green and he turned and said "its amazing whenI was standing in this exact same spot just after the floods there wasn't much green anywhere and you were seriously contemplation the loss of three greens including this one (15th ) look at it now. I find that interesting from some one who has seen the area just after the flood and not seen it again to now and how he picks up the improvements and that when we see things every day we don't notice as much.

Well to next time keep swinging.....pete

Week 16 update

The Verti-Drain out and in action last week.

We have been doing areas of solid tyneing with the verti-drain over the last few weeks it is a slow process but so far so good we have done areas on the 15th,17th,18th,and 8th and 9th fairways. We will get it out again after easter and all the short weeks are over as this does soak up allot of man-hours.

The bunker on the 3rd left hand side has had a drainage inspection and it is as we thought all the sediment has filled the drainage line so we flushed it out and got it draining for the short term but we will have to get in and totally re-instate the whole drainage system in the next few months.

We have seeded the irrigation trenched on the tees and re top-dressed a lot of these, and the trenches on the fairway have also had allot of topping up done on them as well. We plan to over-sow with seed all the trenches over the next month or so.

The weeds in the greens have been sprayed, and you will notice them starting to wither away, we have also started to feed the greens up and get them ready to go into winter a bit stronger.

The drainage for the 6th green has been cleared in the creek, every time this creek area flows it covers up the drainage for the bunkers and green so we cleared it with a excavator and gave it some area to run into.
There is a tree down behind the 15th green it is too wet in there to get at the moment so it will be removed next week once the ground has dried out abit. till next time keep swinging.....pete