It is hard to believe that the winter is near over but there is a few signs that Spring is here, most noticeably is the warmth in the sun these last few days, in fact we are almost in t-shirts at work today.
This past month we have been very busy getting the last of our winter program finished. All the bunkers were successfully revetted and are now back in play after us spending a day screening around 30 tonnes of dune sand for the bases. The last couple of tasks on our winter program were the redesigning of the 3rd tees and also the leveling of the 12th tee. The 3rd has come in very well and will look great when it has a bit of time to settle down. We reduced the teeing area to around half, with separate yellow and white tees. These are linked via a path and are marramed up on one side, with the other having been landscaped and had whins and broom transplanted with the immediate border to the path being heather. The medal tee was raised around 2ft and is a circular shape, reducing maintenance time and 'drawing the eye' away from the fact that the original tee was pointing some 25yds right of the fairway! We were going to install steps up on to the yellow tee but money still being very tight and the season fast approaching, we opted for a season long measure of a turf path with rubber matting reinforcement. Come October, we are aiming to install the steps.
The greens are continuing to recover following a horrendous bout of fusarium at the tail end of last year. The committee made the decision to deny the purchase of fungicide despite the warning that it could wipe out all the surfaces. Unfortunately, when the go-ahead was given, the damage was done so surfaces just now are poor. The recovery is slow due to the time of year but there is a noticeable improvement to them in the last 2wks. We have been top-dressing the greens with pure sand for most of the winter, and in the last 5wks alone we have put on over 60 tonnes. Our seed has just arrived today, BarFescue and Bar2 from Barenbrug. We decided to stick with Barenbrug after a successful couple of seasons using it, so this will be going in the ground in a couple of weeks if the temperatures continue to rise. Our soil temperature is still a little too low for us to be doing it yet so we will continue to dress greens to give a playable surface in the meantime and will keep an eye on the soil temperature. Although the greens are far from ideal just now, when the seed is in and germinated, it will have very little competition so the success of the seedlings should be higher than in previous years. We are very hopeful that the greens will benefit hugely from the early season remedial works that are being undertaken and along with sound agronomic practices in the coming months, they should have a good coverage of fine grasses for the season which will add to the year round playability in the years ahead.
The machines have all been out on the course giving everything a cut. Fairways were cut for the first time since November, some were widened and re-shaped also. The surrounds have been getting heavy dressed since February and are getting their first cut tomorrow. Tees were all verti-drained and will also be cut tomorrow. The semi has been cut and re-shaped, as has the rough.
All in all, it has been yet another very busy winter but gladly we are pretty much ready for the Spring Open on Saturday, with snow forecast we will need to keep our eye on it.
Thanks again for reading and hope that you all have a successful season playing on the links.
Alexander
