Daves Diary 8th January 2017

Here is the very first instalment for 2017…

From all of us down the shed we hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years period, as for us it was business as usual with a lot going on to keep us occupied.

FAIRWAYS

The fairways have bounced back nicely after their recent grooming and with the granular fertiliser we applied just after Christmas we are starting to see a nice green up from it. We expect the flush in growth to be rather moderate compared to some other granulars and expect the effects to start tapering down in another 3-4 weeks, however we will keep topping levels up with monthly foliar feeds to maintain colour and turf density.  Since grooming our mowing heights have been dropped to promote a tighter growth habit plus provide a better fairway/rough definition. We will monitor the fairways over the next 6-8 weeks but I would ideally like to hit them again with another heavy groom in March which will help set us up for the busy winter season.

TEES

The Tees are now on the mend after we attacked them at 3mm (greens height) over a 3 week period, the height has now been risen to 8mm which should see them recover pretty quickly and with the help of a scheduled fertiliser application this week they should be back to 100% in no time. Apart from walking onto the tees and noticing an automatic firmness of the teeing ground we have also reduced our irrigation output by around  40% on tees as the water can now penetrate freely through to the root zone and not contend with the thick layer of thatch that was previously blocking it. Once the tees have fully recovered we will begin applying growth regulators to help slow the vertical growth of the grass and encourage stronger lateral growth which will aid divot recovery, surface tightness and not to mention a drop in mowing related expenses.

BUNKERS

We have just begun our Bi-Annual bunker edge and clean up, this is a very time consuming and tedious job however the finish product does look good and is amazing how a freshly edged bunker can really change the look of the hole. Tuesday mornings is our designated bunker edging day where we all jump in for 3-4 hours and with plenty of banter in between we can knock out quite a few in such a short period of time.

Its pretty hard not to notice but prior to Christmas the bunker on the 1st received some fresh sand, A big thanks must go out to Allan Blake, John Flanagan and Celio for their help. At first the sand will be a little softer but once we rake it more often and constant irrigation we will see it begin to firm up more but in the mean time if golfers could enter and exit the bunkers from the low side and keep off the faces then this will greatly assist in allowing the faces to firm up. When time permits we will start topping up other bunkers on the course so we can start trying to achieve the same sand consistency’s.

COUCH CONTROL

Its that time of year when the couch really starts to show itself, Chemical removal of couch within greens has proven to be quite difficult for the past 20 years as there is only one registered herbicide in the market, which at times delivers varying results and with the cost associated with purchasing the herbicide it doesn’t give you a great deal of confidence in putting it out. Ideally the best time to spray it is in Autumn as the cooler weather allows the bent to come out semi unscathed however as the cooler weather sets in the couch seems to disappear as the bent grows over the top of it. At the moment we are trialing different rates of the herbicide Tupersan  on the putting green and applying it via painting the kikuyu which is encroaching into the green. The thought process behind this is that by applying the tupersan directly to the couch/kikuyu we will minimise the contact with the bent and hopefully allow the heat from the sun to speed up the process. Once we are happy with the results we will  begin applying it out onto the course.

CHIPPING GREEN

The practice green recently experienced a minor set back last Tuesday night from what we believe to be from the grub argentine stem weevil. Stem Weevil lay their eggs on the underside of the leaf and when they hatch they begin feeding on the lower leaf and into the crown of the plant resulting in the turf do die off in a similar resemblance as dry patch. The stem weevil are tiny and can be very difficult to spot by the naked eye however experience has taught me that you can often tell that you have stem weevil damage is by the colour of the turf, dry patch tends to have a  lighter shade of purple where as the steem weevil tend to send it a slightly darker more intense colour from the onset.

The reason as to why we only got it on the chipping green and no where else is that a few days prior to Christmas we sprayed all the greens with a wetting agent and insecticide mix specifically for stem weevil control however as our spray tank holds enough to cover 1Ha of ground and we now have 1.1Ha of greens we needed to refill to finish up on our last green which is always the chipping green as its out the way. On this particular occasion we ran into some irrigation problems when watering in the remaining greens so we had to stop spraying to rectify the problem and never got back to spraying the last remaining green. The positive from this is that we know our insecticide program we have implemented is working perfectly out on the course however oversight after our irrigation issues bit us on the bum in the end. At the moment the green still looks a little worse for wear but we did catch it early enough that it should fully recover as there is plenty of new shoots appearing.

BENT NURSERY

The bent nursery has really kicked on in the last couple of weeks and we have begun mowing it at 8mm. As we start to mow it more regularly you will find the bent grass will start moving sideways and begin to cover quicker. Weekly top dressing will also speed up the process as we want the turf to knit together firmly so we are able to harvest it in a few months time. To further speed it up we have begun feeding it on a weekly basis (less but more often)  rotating between granular and liquid fertilisers focusing on root development and turf density.

UPCOMING MAINTENANCE

• Continue bunker edging and clean up expecting to complete all bunkers by the 23rd Jan
• Granular fertiliser application on tee tops
• Liquid fertiliser application fairways.
• Wetting agent and liquid calcium application to greens
• Foliar application to greens with growth regulator
• finish up respraying the 6th,12th & 15th fairways for kikuyu, will then begin on 1,3,5,11,14,18 targeting both Kikuyu and Parramatta
• double grooming and dusting of greens (weather dependent)