Erecting winter buggy and trolley barriers

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Fertilising greens with some Iron

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Type 3 fairy ring seen in green surrounds

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First of the badger damage since the start of summer

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Leather jacket indicator

Spotted some craneflies in some bunkers this morning. Also noticed a fair bit of crows hanging around on the fairways.
I think this could be a sign of leather jacket presence.

Cutting the green out over irrigation heads

The left hand side of the photos show two poor examples of greenkeeping. This is because it looks a bit neater if one was to leave a slight gap between an irrigation head and the edge of the green.

Bunker damage due to severe rains.

This damage in these bunkers is due to some heavy rainfall that the course experienced (48mm in 24 hours)

Verti-drain fairways

Evidence of blocked nozzles during iron application

Although not entirely visible, there is evidence of lighter areas on the fairways after an iron application using a boom sprayer. Given that the product was applied chiefly for aesthetic reasons, it is fortunate that no harm was done.

This does however highlight the need to regulary check nozzles between different holes one the course. This includes fairways, greens, aprons and tees, or any other areas for that matter.

Flowerbed edging

The lawn at the edge of the flowerbeds directly outside the clubhouse dining area was rather overgrown. Although, there are gardeners that are contracted to maintain these beds, they seem to do the bare minimum. Given that there are so many things that a head greenkeeper is responsible for, it might be a good idea to create a master list of tasks, each associated to particular areas (if necessary). From this list, it will be possible for the head greenkeeper to either allocate individual tasks or possibly even responsibility of specific areas or groups of tasks to certain staff members.

 

OPM Removal

In London, and some surrounding areas there is an insect called the oak processionary moth and at a certain stage in its lifecycle it becomes a hairy caterpillar. These hairs are fairly long and can become airborne and if contact is made, they have the ability to cause alergic responses in certain people. This means that in some cases, the nests of these will need to be manually removed.

This should be done using an industrial vacuum cleaner, a portable blow-torch and the correct PPE including nitrile gloves, coveralls and a facemask.

The procedure includes, vacuuming the nest and all its contents (usually caterpillars), then using the blowtorck to burn off any remains of the nest. The contents of the vacuum bag at the end of the activity should then be incenerated. 

This seems a very inhumane way of dealing with unsuspecting creatures, however these were my instructions. Perhaps another option would be to relocate them, but perhaps the would then pose a risk to other people.

One thing to note, is that when in the process of vacuuming up the nests, the operative should always look up the tree to see if there is a risk of any travelling caterpillars falling, and if so he/she should be weary of this.

Slit-seeding a fairway with sparse growth due to worm cast's created over winter

OPM spotted on the course

Topping the par 3 carries

Changing a lesser used tee into a turf nursery

Iron application to fairways

Fox left for dead by contract hunter

Sometimes the greenkeepers on the course will find paw-prints or holes that have been dug in the bunkers. It is thought that this disturbance is caused by foxes inhabiting the course that emerge at night. Of course this is not convenient and can sometimes mean extra work for the greenstaff.

The head greenkeeper of the course has a firm belief that hunting the foxes on the course will reduce their population significantly enough to reduce this type of bunker disturbance. Of course it is quite possible that shooting a few foxes on the occasional evening might have no significant effect on the amount of foxes that inhabit the golf course. The reason proposed for this is that foxes are quite able to scale walls or dig beneath them, suggesting that any foxes that may be shot, would quite swiftly be replaced by other foxes in and around the area. It is said that for fox populations to be reduced at least 70% of the total population would need to be removed annually. Given the last census of urban foxes in Britain of 33000, this comes to 231000 foxes that would need to be culled each year. Of course the contract hunter on our golf course will not nearly achieve this number, even if he hunts on other golf courses. This would mean the 634 foxes would need to be killed every evening on every day of the year. 

The animal pictured here has been shot by a contract hunter and left for dead. This is arguably an unethical practice given that if an animal is wounded, surely it should be found by the hunter, in order to reduce sufering and also ensure removal of the corpse. This will also limit the chance of any disease transferrence to other fauna or possibly staff and golfers too.

Spring flowerbed planting

Disease on tees

Practice green pin, flag and cup replacement

Striping the fairways

Lowering the tee's height from 8mm to 6mm

First application of PGR and nitrogen

Albeit still a bit cold, 6 April was the first time we've applied fertiliser and growth regulator to the fairways.

Bunker sand adjustment

Currently the bunkers have a problem where if a ball lands directly onto the bunker-face then it plugs into the sand instead of bouncing back and rolling onto the flat. In order to try prevent this, we have been tasked to rake some of the excess sand off the bunker-faces

Clearing grass clumps after scarifying

1st apron cut

Verti-cutting fairways with a Veemo

Pre-spring maintenance

Re-turfing and rubber-matting high traffic areas

Spraying iron on greens but not aprons

Winter tree maintenance

Removal of an unused tee box

Adjusting the fairway path

Cold weather

The past two weeks have been quite cold with temperatures dropping to 0 degrees Celsius. This meant that we have had frost and even one occasion snow.
Prior to this however, and as is the case today, the lowest temperature has been ranging between 5 and 10 degrees Celsius.

This means that the grass on the course has been growing, albeit at a slow pace.
In fact it has grown so much in places that the head greenkeeper saw the need to cut the rough areas while still frosty.
Contrary to what may seem to be best practice, without the recent cold temperatures, the ground in these areas would be very wet (instead of partially frozen) and not really suited to vehicular traffic.

Snow

This weekend the course was closed for a day due to some snow coverage.
There was no sign of any snow the following day.

H&S washdown bay size reduction

Yesterday and today we reduced the size of an okd washdown bay which was posing a trip hazard.

Work involved removing the grids and cleaning the area beneath them. We then pkaced them back in position and reduced their size by means of cutting hem with a oxy-cetylene torch. The steps were to remove the supporting i-beam, fill the hole with some recycled road material, compacting this and then pouring cement over.

Garden maintenance

The heather in this flowerbed was trimmed back a bit. This is in order to prevent the plants from becoming too woody.