Dry spots and low rainfall

We've had only about 5mm of rain in the past 40 days now. Temperatures are up too and the evapotranspiration (ET) rate over 5mm/day.

The course manager has ample water available on site and is irrigating at least 2mm per evening. This equates to approximately 1.2 million litres an application. What's quite impressive is that this volume of water is applied in a window of about 4 hours.

I will get more information about this and create a separate post.

What is important to note is that even though our irrig
ating practices cannot match the ET rate, the course is still looking great!

Topderessing greens

There are different quantities of top dressing you could put on a turf surface depending on what you'd like to achieve and other factors (growth rate and work required post dressing...). Here we rate our dressings as light,medium and heavy (4, 6 or 8 tons per 18 greens).

We aim to top-dress our greens every 2 weeks during the growing season, currently with the main aim of smoothing the playing surface. 

Spray Fairways

Ammonium sulphate and some macro and micronutrients

Spray greens

Primo Maxx and Ryder dye

Top-dress, Needle tine and brush greens

It's been a month of cutting and rolling, also with no rain. This should help reduce compaction, aerate and improve water penetration to the root zone.

Green cutting

Currently we alternate cutting methods on the greens of the two courses. Each course is hand-cut one day, followed by being tri-plex cut. This gives a good quality playing surface and also good presentation.

Hand cutting aprons

Hand-cut aprons. The goal is to do this twice a week in these conditions. 

Spray tees

A combination of two selective herbicides was applied to the tee boxes.

Spray greens

Sprayed greens with chelated iron, magnesium sulphate and wetting agent. Because of the very dry and windy conditions, the wetting agent was watered in with a short spurt of irrigation, immediately after application. 

Divot Seeding

Some bunker work

Evapotranspiration (ET)

As a rule of thumb, my manager says you only need to replace 60% of the water lost through ET. 

Currently ET measures 3mm and irrigation applied is 1mm

Drop greens height

From 3.5mm to 3mm

Started working at a 36 hole course in Denmark

Greens

Greens sprayed with iron, ammonium sulphate and some wetting agent