An Indian Summer??

What a great week of weather! It has been fantastic for us this week and despite being down to 2 staff this week, we have done some great work. More about that later.

Over the last few weeks, we have had some heavy early morning dews. This has led to regular switching and brushing on the greens to remove the dew in order to help keep surfaces dry. 

Although we have already applied a preventative fungicide to protect against fusarium, it is still good practice to remove dew even though the late mornings and early afternoons have been utilised for greens mowing/rolling.

Last week, we passed the slitter through the greens in order to encourage root growth as we head into mid-autumn. Slitting is great because it causes no disruption to the surfaces and after mowing or rolling, the gaps close up nicely. 

The autumn fertiliser application is slowly releasing small amounts of nitrogen. The surfaces now have a lovely pale green colour with excellent grass coverage and good grass density. The light topdressing application from last week has settled in nicely and after some rolling and walk mowing, the greens are lovely and firm.

This week, we took the opportunity to verti drain the problematic areas on the 8th green. Following this, we topdressed the holes and brushed in the sand. We feel that if we keep up with regular aeration on this green then it should stand up better to heavy rain.

You will also notice that we verti drained the putting green with a 3/4 inch tine. After this operation, the putting green was rolled. Now it is lovely and firm! The improvement to this green over the past 18 months is considerable - perhaps regular aeration and topdressing is not that bad after all!!

This week we managed to get all the fairways cut - several were double cut. They look tremendous given that we are now in October.

James has been well exercised this week. He has had plenty more practice walk mowing greens. Although they aren't as quick nor mown as short as during the summer, the main aim for us is that the greens are firm, dry and have good grass coverage as we head into autumn and winter. 

There is still some anthracnose disease evident on the poa (annual meadow grass). This is a stress related disease and often occurs at the back end of summer. The poa is usually the first grass type to suffer and the main ways to combat this are to raise the height of cut, add some nitrogen based fertiliser for recovery and aerate to relieve compaction. Hence we will verti drain the greens next week.

Otherwise, we are looking pretty good for the next week. The leaves are now beginning to fall and that is our next challenge!

Have a great weekend and enjoy your golf!