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.

Garden maintenance

Yesterday I was tasked with carrying out some maintenance in a small flowerbed. I believe that the ornamental turf  pictured is Carex buchanii.
Maintenance included  trimming approximately 1/2 the length of the foliage, and any fallen leaves too.
After raking away the remaining debri, we topped up the bark-chip mulch layer.

Solid tining

Tree removal

Bunker repair and turf replacement

After repairing this bunker we were tasked with replacing the turf in the immediate vicinity. The head greenkeeper kindly invested in a new rotovator which was highly effective in preparing the soil without much effort prior to planting the new turf. Once the area had been rotovated, we raked the soil to the desired levels and then compressed it by stepping over the area systematically. Thereafter we raked it again to smooth it over.

Cutting tees with pedestrian mowers

In order to minimise damage caused whilst cutting tees with a triplex mower (due to turning),  the head greenkeeper set some of our greens mowers at 10mm height of cut (HOC). We then used these to cut the tees with an impressive result.