14th update

The 14th is suffering from poor daylight, excess thatch & weak grass growth, which in turn, has let moss grow, so thatch won't let water pass through it & moss that holds water, dug that out & installed drains, improve soil structure, all that is left to do is turf area. 

Once I've turf these areas, I be concentrating on areas right hand side, driving tractor to take material out & in has done some damage & put drains in while I'm at it. 

Course update

I have dug new drains in at 14th, while I was digging drains in i notice soil was dryer than the surface, reason being the grass was poor thin due to lack of sun & air & root growth was shallow with a deep layer of thatch, so I dug big area of turf out & thatch & replace with top soil & sand to make levels ready for turfing. As you see the first picture is the thatch which stop water going down & through the soil to free draining layer or drains. Second picture showing turf & thatch dug out ready for topsoil. Then later turf weather permitting. 

I have taken trees down by the 16th tee as these tree are shallow rooters & don't have a tap root (Corsican pines), plus high risk of them coming down on to a house, just before Christmas we had very high winds & few trees blew down,

I had a tree surgeon in & have taken a lot of the trees down now this has let more light & air in to tee & green which is great,  I don't what leave it bear not with trees as we have the same problem, I like to see shrubs as they don't grow as high, so the odd tree but mostly shrubs along there give houses plenty of light for them as well as green.

I now in the shed working on the machines I have started on the articulator which cuts all the rough, first thing i took gearbox off to change oil & have look inside see how its looking, if I need to replace any parts, as you can see defently needed a oil change & the gears was all ok so clean up put back together. 

As for the rest of the articulator I'm striping machine down & replace any parts & greasing machine as I go, good way of check machines is to strip down & clean then put back together. 

Update

It's been busy I have verti drain greens 20mm diameter x 400mm long tines down to a depth of 275mm with heave on, once all greens were done the following week we hollow core greens 12mm x 125mm tines down to a depth of 85mm, we had a lot of cores to pick up which took longer than hollow coring greens & hard work. 

Once all that was done the following week I vertical cut greens followed up with top dressing greens at the same time applied seaweed meal, then brushed & drag mat in.

 It was hard going but we manage to get it done, due to the hard work I took time off to rest a week later coming back to work found greens have disease hit the greens due wet weather & volume of play.

 Now we are into winter grass has slowed down & we are left with scares from the disease, grass is growing back but very slowly will take time & when soil temputures are up I will overseed the greens to help the recovery of the greens in spring time. Now we are into winter I have started on drain jetting drains the machine is an absolute god send as it save time & clean the drains complety, making drains more efficiently. In return course will dry up that little bit quicker, the only problem with the drains are they are to small 2" pipe which means they silt up quickly, with any new drains I be putting in bigger size pipe 4" -12" pipe. 

 I'm been looking at the 14th why it has becoming wetter, done some investigation found that the water is not getting down to the drain, what's causing this is a build up of thatch & moss which holds onto the water the trees haven't help staving the grass from sunlight & air movement grass needs sunlight to help it grow (photosynthesis), but what I am doing is installing drains in at 14th which help with the wetnest but this is not a quick fix but a step in the right direction, over time with more drains install will benefit the course big time!  

HOC

During the summer I've been cutting greens at height of cut between 3.5mm-2.6mm 

 

Greens looking good & very dense sward 

Divot on 16th green

I was cutting greens in the morning & came across a divot taken out of the 16th green, this is not acceptable!

Pictures of the course

Spiking greens

I have started to spike greens but instead of doing all 18 greens in couple of days we be doing 2/4 greens a week right through rest of the season & that there is only 2 of us & we need to keep on top of the grass cutting, & to keep greens as good as they are I need to spike them to get air Into the ground. More often than you might think as some types of spiking will be virtually invisible after the greens have been cut. The aeration that produces the most disruption is the Vertidrain. This makes 300mm deep holes as well as lifting the whole surface shattering the soil underneath. Timing is critical, as the soil has to be firm but not too hard. And the reason for doing all this? The roots of the grass live in the spaces between the soil particles. Your feet plus maintenance equipment compacts these spaces together not only stopping healthy growth of the grass but also reducing the drainage.

Tru-turf greens roller

I've had a demo of a tru-turf greens roller for a few days which has improved the greens smoothness from 7 out 10 to 9 out 10 & used more often could get 10 out 10 & maintain it through the playing season.
Also green speed measured with stimp meter showed green not cut running at 8'2" then rolled increased to 9'6"  then green cut was measured 9'8" then rolled measured at 11'5"  this measurement was on one green.

Greens

I had no irrigation for the last 6 weeks & with the the weather we have over the last six weeks, greens were needing a bit of water. 

 Now we have had pump fix all that's left to do is replace some decoders & sprinklers which are not rotating but the greens are looking good even though they have had hardly any water. 

 The system is old & with it lots of bits in the water (silt) which wears moving parts over time needs to be replace over time sprinklers heads, pump blades. 

Height of cut

Here I'm looking through my prism gauge to see the actual height we are cutting at, I bench set units at 2.60mm.

 As you can see in the picture is a uniform cut but height is 2mm & with stimp meter  which measure how the greens are running slow 4.5 feet, medium 6.5 feet, fast 8.5 feet, speed is not the main factor but majority of golfers prefer fast greens,  the main reason for stimp reading greens is getting consistency through all greens, not only stimp meter for how the greens are running but also for smoothness. 

Top dressing greens

I've been top dressing greens, I scarified greens first to get rid of lateral growth, remove dead matter, remove any seed heads if any are present but help top dressing get in around crown, holding grass up more vertical & today's top dressing will become root zone of the future after the top dressing i will brush & drag mat sand into grass sward, I will be doing this on a regular basis of 3-4 weeks doing this will help with smoothness & improve root zone over time. 

Smoothness test

Here I'm checking the smoothness out of 10 so I will do this over 3 greens & take an average, this will help with knowing how the greens are running so 1 extremely poor, 10 excellent

2nd bunker

I have put sand into it now & it's looking good as you can see the walkway between bunker and were I'm standing was turfed is also coming on nicely.

Toro units

I have started to strip down regrind cylinder & replace worn out bottom blade with new one, replace any bolts that are worn, & I have replace bushes which I have made new ones up ready to go onto units. Not only bushes I've made up but I have also made some scraper bars the toro never had any so making bars up & fitting them took a bit longer but worth it.

Path at 16th

Path at 16th looking from fairway back to tee now been done with 3/4 to dust just requires a roll but that be done when conditions are dry enough.

Greens units

Here I checking to see if unit is cutting paper this is single piece of paper place into between bed-knife & cylinder, I turn the cylinder making sure it turns easy and there is no contact with the bed knife, which means less friction, less effort on engine saving fuel, but to maintain this requires regular backlaping little but often is how I like to do it which would maintain cutting edge, disadvantage it's wears the bed-knife out requiring replace through the season.

Digging holes

We are digging holes were water has been sitting & that has damaged the turf, so we are digging through the clay layer & getting into free drain soil I'm hoping this will help dry up these areas but when water levels are high water won't drain away. we are digging down to a depth of about 6ft or more then we be filling them up with drainage material. We then turf them when done so have put a slab on top just for safety.

3rd path

The path washed away after flooding so we have filled it up with rubble then top of with shells, which I trying out

2nd bunker

Before I start this bunker we were repairing walk way between 2nd & 16th green I lifted damage turf up found the drain that was 3/4 full of silt, clear as much of silt out as possible then fill up the hole with 10mm stone up to the soil surface, before we turf it I used the sand from the 2nd bunker as it was washed out & contaminated with silt, got me thinking while I was here to save a bit of money & improve the look of the bunker I revetted the bunker so I don't have to fill up with as much sand saving money and if sand is washed away it's not as much cost to top up again,