Its been a couple of weeks since my last post as we have been busy preparing the courses for Captains week and then Club Championship. Most of our time at this period in the year is centred around presentation and making sure all surfaces are in good order for the busy club schedule.

Greens are currently being cut at 4mm and rolled/ironed up to three times per week to maintain good pace whilst not sacrificing the finer grasses by cutting at low heights. Collars and aprons are cut three times per week at 8mm as you have probably noticed we have in some cases taken this collar cut further out from the green to improve the quality of surface and to increase the playability of the immediate surfaces around the greens. The collars and aprons are maintained exactly the same as the greens apart from the height of cut.

Fairways are cut at 14mm three times per week, we have over the last couple of days had contractors in to apply herbicide to a number of fairways which have areas of clover infestation. Divoting is continuing and it was unfortunate we had to cancel the scheduled divot repair evening yesterday due to the bad weather, we hope to have another date soon.

This week we have continued our top dressing and aeration programme with all green being solid tined with 8mm tines followed by a light top dressing of around 11 tonnes. This will be completed on a monthly basis.

I will leave you this week with a number of picture from over the last two weeks.

Pedestrian cutting Captains day Morning.

This week has been really busy for all of the greenkeeping team with the preparation of both courses for Captains week. All the staff have been great putting in extra hours to maintain pedestrian cutting on greens and tees for example.

We have been testing greens on a number of occasions during the week and are producing around 9.5 - 10 feet of pace on the greens. This is expected to rise slightly with a couple of extra rolls before the weekend, however the weather may have a big part to play in that! The greens are being cut daily at 4mm with pedestrian mowers, we are aiming to continue with the pedestrian mowing though next week and into next weekend for the Club Championship. We will maintain pace on the greens through further rolling.

I am always emphasising how important our aeration is in terms of creating healthy growing conditions within the soil and giving the finer grasses the correct environment to flourish in. the picture below shows a hole plug taken out of the 7th Green on lodge with root growth down aeration holes made by the verti drain, some 12" down! This is exactly what we are trying to achieve.

The first divot repair evening went ahead on Thursday 6th June it was a great success and enjoyed by all members who attended, thank you all as this kind of work really does make a difference. I will be organising further evenings in the future, I will keep you posted with dates.

Our main focus on the course has been presentation and making sure all surfaces are managed correctly with major club competitions scheduled over the coming weeks.

With the weather also warming up we have to keep an eye on soil moisture and making sure if we do irrigate we only use this as a tool to keep the turf alive, we use a soil moisture probe and irrigate when the moisture falls below 10%. We complete hand watering to isolated areas if needs be rather than using the irrigation system, this allows us to maintain a healthy sward dominated by the finer grasses, over watering would only encourage the shallow rooted poorer grasses.

Greens are currently being cut at 4mm with pedestrian mowers Monday to Friday and ride on's being used during the weekend. We are also rolling in the region of three times per week to increase speed without dropping height of cut and increase smoothness.

Its been a little while since my last post, over the last two weeks not only has the weather improved but we have experienced some good greenkeeping conditions.
Work on the course has been predominately centred around surface preparations and this week we have again top dressed both sets of greens and for the first time this year we have verti cut all greens.

The picture above shows the verti cut units, these vertically rake the surface to take out any lateral growth or seed heads of the annual meadow grass. It is very important to us not to be too aggressive with verti cutting and set the depth at 1mm above ground level, any lower than this and you risk removing too much grass tissue and weakening any new or seedling grasses which may be in the sward. The finer grasses which we are trying to manage and dominate our greens can also be harshly effected by too aggressive verti cutting. This operation is also useful in helping to integrate the top dressing into the sward.

We have applied in the region of 10 tones on each course, Lodge yesterday and Highgate today. this will be a our last dressing until after the run of major competitions which we have coming up in the diary.

Both courses are beginning to shape up nicely, one job that really does not get the credit it deserves is hole changing. We generally change holes up to four times per week and great care is taken to make a clean new hole we use up to date hole changers which take out a complete plug using a single blade which leaves no imperfections around the edge.

Pedestrian mowing is continuing on both courses as we feel that although it is a little more time consuming than ride on mowing it gives us a far superior finished and look to the tees as shown above on the 1st Lodge.

fairway definition has really improved over the last week with all fairways really thickening out and the fescue doing nicely.