May Update

It has been yet another manic month here at Golspie. The staff shuffle left us with just two staff for most of the month and in that time we had two Opens and club competitions to deal with. Our weather has picked up, staying relatively damp but day temperatures picked up to more seasonal averages so our young seedlings are now thriving and have recovered the greens very well.

So far this month we have been concentrating on the general tidiness so cutting has taken priority. The course definition is looking really nice and although heights are still to be reduced, the course is playing very well. The greens are completely recovered with the exception of the seaward side (3-6) that took a hammering last year and were submerged twice by the sea. These are improving and are around 95% of the way to be fully recovered. With the weather having been noncompliant towards recovery, we had to wait a good 6wks before we were able to apply our lawn sand which just went on this past Monday. This will harden our young seedlings and set them up well for the coming season. We've been hand rubbing seed in to some blemishes on some greens which is a sign that we are getting very picky and they must be recovering well!

This coming month, starting on Monday, we will be running our overseeder with straight BarFescue on a double pass, some that are thinner will get three passes, and this will do away with the 'maintenance week' in August. The seed is better in the ground than sitting in a bag in the shed! The management decided that it would be a good idea to give as long a period as possible of uninterrupted play for members and visitors through the bulk of the playing season. With that in mind, seeding done now should recover and germinate very quickly and it will then leave some pencil tining, dressing and the odd verticut to contend with for the summer. Following the seeding we will pencil time them to 8" and then dress them up and that'll be the last of the recovery works and it'll be the usual regime of fortnightly dusting of dressings and  pencil tining every 6-8wks.

The weed killing will commence this month, with the common daisy being our biggest nemesis. These will be hit the week commencing 1/6/15, if the traditional Golspie winds are favourable. Divoting remains a priority so if members feel inclined, please come and help out on that front.

Lastly, today we are taking delivery of our brand new Jacobsen Eclipse 322 Hybrid greens mower. It's been a long wait but we are very much looking forward to getting this machine out on the course and it will give us a great deal of flexibility in our maintenance regimes. This is mainly down to the adjustable clip rate that means we can increase or decrease the spin rate of the cylinders to coincide with the condition of the greens. If they are lush we can increase the clip rate to almost give a double cut appearance and remove more grass. Likewise if they are drying out, we can decrease them to take off very little and just give them a gentle tidy up. A SUPERB piece of kit and one which will be a great help out here to us as it will also free up our aged Toro 3250 for verticut units, top dressing and also cutting collars.

That's about it this month, fingers crossed the sun starts shining and we can all get out and enjoy the course.

Cheers

Alexander
Head Greenkeeper.