Merry Christmas

I am taking a break over the Christmas period, we have a member of the team in every day to check on the course but I will update the blog at the start of the New Year. From all the green staff have a merry Christmas and a happy (hopefully drier) new year!

Blog hits Bigga magazine

My golf course blog has been featured in Decembers issue of the BIGGA (British and International Golf Greenkeers Association) magazine. The article has been written by our agronomist Robert Laycock and is a full page, highlighting the benifits for golf course managers using blogs as a method of communication to members. Robert discusses my thoughts on blogging and other blogs that inspired me to blog about work we do on the course at Malton and Norton. To read the full article please ask for a copy in the club office.

We have finally come to the end of the drainage work on the 18th hole, we have installed around 350 meters at various points on the hole and covered all the wettest areas. Most of the turf was usable and was re laid back on the drain lines. The turf that was poor or dead will be replaced at the start of the new year. When we get some drier weather we will roll all the drain lines with the heavy roller. After the rain we had on Friday and Saturday they certainly had worked and the rain water had gone by the next morning.

The lads installing the final pipework yesterday.

With all the drainage we can do this side of Christmas done, we concentrated on a few other tasks on the course, the greens were hand cut, except the 21st and 24th due to flooding.

Following this I sprayed the greens with fungicide that have not been treated from a couple of weeks ago. This should prevent disease for the next month of so, weather dependant. I also sprayed all the greens with iron to aid colour and again to prevent disease occurring. The greens were rolled to help firm up the surface after the frost heave they suffered, from the cold nights last week.

The water level has finally dropped on holes 21-24 so the flood water is slowly running away off the course. There is still alot of flooding but has dropped significantly from last week.

We assessed the damage the water has caused, although it has been flooded for some time there doesn't seem to be too many problems except discolouration, debris and silt deposits. These holes wont be open for some time.

Leaves are back on the priority list now we have some time, we couldn't get all of them cleared up before we had the recent rainfall, so there are still a lot of leaves about which are not only unsightly but can cause damage to the turf. Alistair spent most of today blowing leaves from around greens so the turf is not effected. Tomorrow we will try to remove the worst of them with the tornado blower and from out of the 5th/6th copse by hand. The ditches on the 9th are being cleared out and all the debris taken away.

 

 

Its been a good week for the team and we have progressed well with the drainage on 18. All the drains have been dug and filled in except the area in front of the ladies tee. Some of the turf wasn't good enough to be able to be lifted so those areas will need to be replaced. Some semi rough turf will be taken from the end of the range, the turf for the fairways will have to be bought in but there wont be a lot that will be needed.

Overall we have made little mess as the ground has been frozen solid when we have been leading away the soil. Next week we will hopefully be able to get an application of iron on the greens before the Christmas period and finish cutting 19-27 greens.
The water level has finally dropped on the river side of the flood bank so we can open the flood gate and let some water off the course. Holes 21-24 have been under water for around 3 weeks, I'm hoping the damage left behind is minimal. I will update the severity of damage next week when the water has drained off the golf course.

As the cold weather returns we are concentrating on drainage on the 18th fairway. Inspection holes were dug to ensure that the drains were running freely. The laterals meet a main pipe which runs towards the 14th ditch, at both junctions in front of the 18th tee it was clear that they were running well enough. We took measurements from the main drain and the 17th ditch to see if we could divert the main into the 17th ditch  which would allow the water to discharge much more quickly after heavy rain. Unfortunately the main is slightly lower than the ditch so this isn't possible. We can however put a t piece into the main to connect drainage in front of the 18th tee, this has been a very wet area this year and is a 'pinch point' for golfers making it difficult to prevent it being muddy.

We continued on the fairway installing another 90 meters of drainage. Tomorrow we should have finished on the 18th fairway, with only the front of the tee to finish. We will then tidy up all previous work and concentrate on other jobs before we get to Christmas. In the new year we will then start on the 15th fairway.

We have also started cleaning the ditches out which were cut a few weeks ago, and continued servicing the fairway mowers.

The course has eventually thawed out enough that we could get out to cut the greens, move holes, tidy leaf litter around tees and greens and rake bunkers. With the course being frozen solid for the last week or so the greens had not been cut for around 3 weeks. We put the height of cut up to 6mm for the first cut as not too take too much off at once and with more frosts forecast will give them a little protection. All 18 greens currently in play were cut with the hand mower, the rest of the greens on 19-27 will be cut tomorrow.

Once we had finished our initial tasks we continued with the drainage on 18, the rest of the trenches were filled with root zone and the turf re laid. Tomorrow we will start draining the middle section of the 18th and finish off the 2 bunkers

More overnight rain fell on to frozen ground causing ice and a lot of stood water on the course again. With another cold night in prospect we had to push off what water we could on the greens before it freezes again. This is not best practice but it will minimise damage on the greens in the long term. We will still be on temporary greens if the course is open at the weekend due to the ice and dangerous conditions.

We managed to resume draining on the 18th this afternoon, all drains were dug and back filled with stone. They will be finished with root zone and turfed next week. We extended the drains into the green side bunker and re newed the sharp sand and gravel in the fairway bunker just short of the green to ensure the drain works efficiently.

Drainage on 18th and now its snowing

After all the bad weather we have had the snow we had yesterday afternoon has just finished things off.

Fortunately we had progressed well with the drainage on 18 before the snow arrived. We had around 40 meters to finish digging today which we completed and the majority filled in. We will hopefully finish what we started tomorrow. Next week we will move down the 18th fairway where there are low areas and water collects causing damage.

18th drainage continued

With the greens still covered in ice and the forecast for more freezing conditions and snow flurries we have had to resort to putting some of the flags on the fairway in front of the green to get play restarted. Tomorrow when open, there will be roughly 12 greens that are effected by ice. The ice has caused issues as the greens are frozen down to about an inch and any water on the surface can not drain away, even with good daytime temperatures the ice is simply thawing and then refreezing on a night. Over the next couple of days the ice will hopefully reduce enough to reopen the effected greens, currently they are too dangerous for golfers to walk on. Ice is also effecting other areas of the course, especially where the water was stood from the floods we had last week, The water pump is still running throughout the day to drain any excess water from areas of the course.

The driving range

We continued with the drainage on the 18th today, filling in the trenches from yesterday and starting new drainage trenches today.

 

This morning brought more unplayable conditions, as overnight rain and snow had refrozen on the greens causing patches of ice. The day improved so hopefully if it doesn't freeze tonight we might have playable conditions in the morning. Today we continued taking down the hedge between 18 and 19. We are making good progress, in place of the hedge we are planting trees taken from areas across the course where they have self seeded or trees that need moving to a more suitable place. Most of the trees are hardwoods, however we have a number of spruce trees which we are going to use between the 19th and the practice ground.

The River Derwent is beginning to fall on the opposing side to the golf course however it is still rising on the course, hopefully the levels will drop far enough by the end of the week we will be able to open the flood gate and release the water on our side of the defences.

Yes this is the golf course, holes 21 and 22

We started our drainage project on 18, first removing the turf then digging out the drainage trenches, we will fill these in tomorrow

 

We continued to pump water from the 26th green area, starting at first light we had the pump running all day to remove the flooded area, there is a lot of water in this area so it will take us some time to dry the course up.

The River Derwent is incredibly high, as all of members are aware Malton has been severely affected by flooding, I can definitely say if the flood defences had not been built after the floods of 2000 we would have the same damage as back then, which took months to recover. These pictures were taken today and shows how close we are to the disasters of 12 years ago.

 The water level to the left of the flood bank is 5 cm  from spilling over the top of the flood bank, hopefully without rain for the last 3 days the water level will start to fall.

 The water level on the course side of the bank is a lot lower and at present the damage is minimal although due to the height of the flood water the level is slowly rising. We hope that over the course of next week the flood waters will drop significantly.

We also continues with the hedge removal on 18 and 19

 

Today Rob and I spent most of the day battling the standing water with the water pump. We finished the 1st fairway, which was the largest area on 1-9, then pumped out the 8th and 9th green side bunkers.

We then tackled the area between 11th tee and the 12th green.

This unfortunately highlighted another problem, the pipe connecting the 12th ditch to the 9th ditch was obstructed, so Will and Scott roded the pipe to free the debris and is now running great.

The rest of the team continued to remove the hedgerow between 18 and 19, once again this is for safety reasons, as shots hit over the hedge could potentially hit an on coming golfer or a member of the green staff. More trees are to be planted where the hedge is removed to help define the two holes.

The forecast is for drier weather over the next few days, but very cold nights, as the greens will become frozen Rob moved 1-13 holes in preparation for the opening of a least 1-9 holes. 1-9 holes will be inspected tomorrow with a view to getting some of the course back open for Saturday. The rest of the course is still incredibly wet and will not be open until at least Monday

Testing times

Now the forecast looks a little drier we are starting to assess the damage and water on the course in an effort to get some holes open as soon as we can. Holes 1-9 are the driest on the course and will take the least time to recover. We began pumping some of the flood water from really bad areas on these 9 holes so they can begin to dry out. Pumping water from areas across the course is going to be an ongoing task, but we are making every effort to minimise course closure.

The 1st fairway

Flooding on the course more pics

I was unfortunate enough to witness the devastating floods in 1999 and 2000 that left the course under water for weeks, causing untold damage to a lot of areas. This morning when we walked the course to push water off the greens it was very similar to back then. Water in a lot of areas we NEVER see water, pooled into lakes around greens and tees and fairways saturated. There were a few puddles on the greens although the work we have done and the verti draining has helped reduce the stood water but the surfaces were very soft in areas.

Not nice to see I know

We are able to continue with work in and around the shed, so Adam and my self continued with the machinery servicing, Alistair and Scott finished the shed soak away.

Then we started to remove the hedge between 18 and 19 which has been passed for removal to improve safety for golfers and incorporate the 19th hole into the rest of the golf course.