On Wednesday and Thursday we worked on all the tee boxes as follows:
- mow
- hollow-core
- pick up all cores by hand (spades)
- blow excess debris off with a backpack blower
- topdress
- brush topsoil in with mounted triplex brushes
- spread seed
- spread fertiliser
The tees were all blown clear again on Friday after they had been mown again.
Our head Greenkeeper is running a trial using a Graden CSI.
This machine scarifies the ground but also fills the grooves made by tge scarification blades with both sand and seed. Each pass removes 15% of the surface.
In this case we completed two passes; removing 30% surface area in total.
This is the only green that we did this to and it is also the only supplementary cultural practice that this green was given.
In order to carry out some course work on the greens and aprons, 9 of the 18 holes on the course were closed on Monday and Tuesday. The front nine on Monday and the back nine on Tuesday.
The procedure was as follows :
- cut with a triplex mower
- bi-directional verti-cut
- clear remaining debris with backpack blowers
- hollow tine (different machines for greens and aprons)
- pick up cores
- clear remaining debris with backpack blowers
- verti-drain to a depth of nine inches
- double-roll with a turf-iron (greens only)
- topdress (different medium for aprons and greens in order to cut costs)
- brush top dressing in
- fertilise
- water
A few months ago on 07-05-2014 I posted some pictures of what I had planted in a barren section of a drainage channel. Then on 16-07-2014 I posted some pictures of herbicides being applied to these channels.
In this post I would like to highlight the importance of both communication and education.
After I planted up this channel I did not communicate my efforts to the rest of the team. If i had done this, I would have been able to explain my intentions and indirectly educated the team about the benefits that could arise from what I had done. Having failed to do this my efforts were in vain and no benefit has been gained .
