Growth spurt

Since my last blog things have been a little hectic to say the least. A week ago things were looking dry and we had to deal with the irrigation system playing up, following a dry week or so we have had two spells of rain, the first on Saturday which brought 10mm of rain and the second around 7mm last Wednesday. This has kick started the spring growth. All the grass was waiting for is to get the right soil temperatures and the right amount of moisture and it will grow. This is now evident across the course with most areas growing rapidly and we are finding it challenging to get on top of all areas. 

In simple terms when you get heat and water at the same time that creates growth. In a more scientific view, we call the relationship between soil/ air temperature levels throughout the day and moisture 'growth potential'.

Basically when the temperature reaches a level that a grass can grow at it's maximum, given the right supply of nutrients, water and light, this is it's maximum growth potential. We can control the amount of nutrients and water to some level, and using plant growth regulators we can regulate growth. 

This will start to be applied next week. This should take the flush of growth from playing surfaces. Tees, surrounds and approaches are to be sprayed also.

The priority this week has been cutting the intermediate rough , between holes and around landing areas. The areas which are not cut at all are really thick and lush, my advice would be to avoid these areas. The reason these are left to grow up long is that we have selected areas which we feel are out of play for the majority of golfers, that saves us time to concentrate on the in play areas and ensure we get all maintenance needed done within the time we have. Our staff levels are very tight for the size of course and we feel that the most important areas, i.e. greens, surrounds, tees, fairways and semi takes priority and the majority of our time and effort is directed to those.

We also cut fairways, cut copses, cut bunker faces, cut the range, picked up balls, moved holes, cut semi, clipped around sprinkler heads and as mentioned above cut rough with the tractor mounted deck. Will has also been busy strimming around hard to reach areas

After the winter we have just experienced we are vertidraining a number of areas which are very compacted and after only a little rain stand water. The compaction is caused by foot traffic and machinery when the soil is very wet, the wet conditions increases the amount of surface compaction. To relieve it, the vertidrain heaves the soil structure creating fractures and air spaces which allow the soil to drain much more freely. The main areas of concern were the 10th and 9th fairways, the 1st semi and around a number of greens. Hopefully this should improve the grass coverage in those areas also.