"There's not a lot you can do when the weather is like this, is there ?"

Happy New Year everyone from a winter wonderland

A familiar comment we hear is that of the blog title; "there's not much you can do when it's like this, is there?". To which the reply is "true, however, we are doing X, Y and Z".

So what are those things? Let's look at a few projects and tasks that we have been doing recently.

Firstly, debris (branches, twigs etc) has obviously fallen a lot recently and so these areas are being tidied up. John Mercer and Tom Frame put in a shift on Tuesday morning, assisting with clearing up the area under the Willow trees, left of 5th fairway. Then they set to work with a fire, burning the brash from said work.

Related to this, we took the pole saw out on Monday and carried out some light pruning of branches on the large Oak tree directly behind the 8th green. As the photos attest, this tree creates a fair bit of shade in the middle to back of this green. This can contribute to poorer growth because with shade comes colder conditions, less sunlight, less density of growth and a weaker surface. 

So the object of this exercise was merely to create more gaps for sunlight to pass through to the green, breaking up those shadows. Remember this - once that Oak tree is in full leaf, those gaps of sunlight are reduced markedly, hence the need to act now. Often, greenkeepers will do jobs like this not because they dislike trees per se but more that small 'wins' like this can often contribute to better playing surfaces.

Also going on at the moment is refreshing the tee markers. These have been brought in, dried out in a warm office, sanded down and then repainted. It's nice to get a smooth finish and take time to get the detail right in the painting. They are now looking sharp and ready to go back out in Spring.

Machinery maintenance, often an overlooked part of our work, is given more attention in the winter months because it coincides with less daylight hours and more inclement weather. Dark mornings or days of heavy rain often enable this work to be done with suitable justification. 

We recently cut the entire golf course in the second full week of January. This presented the course better and restored some much needed definition for members. It actually looked more like a golf course at the end of that week. The downside was mowers (in particular the fairway mower) cutting grass but with worm casts visible. The effects of this lead to a dulling of the cutting cylinders. Having our own grinding equipment is a superb asset at this time of year. 

We power wash the units, strip them down and then mount them on the grinders to restore the sharp edges of the blades. This then enables us to get back out with those mowers and actually cut grass again rather than trying to cut grass with dull blades.

Another part of our machinery maintenance is parts replacement. As you can see from the photos below, these tees mower units have had new parts fitted that form part of the rear roller brushes. These brushes clean the rear rollers following mowing of tees, surrounds etc and help to keep those rollers collecting worm cast debris, grass etc which can then lead to roller bearing degradation. So we have replaced pulleys, belts, bearings, brush shafts etc in a quieter period to enable us to be ready when growth resumes in Spring.

I've also been in touch with an external contractor, organising quotes for drainage project work and a few other course improvements in the pipeline. The anticipation is that more settled weather and ground conditions will enable us to finally execute some of these planned improvements.

We'll get a winter fertiliser out on the greens once the snow and thaw occurs. This is more of a nutrient support product rather than a fertiliser designed to specifically push growth. We're replenishing the soil nutrient pool - often something that affects USGA greens in winter because the sandy soils leach nutrient more quickly than soil or clay based soils.

Granted, whilst it may appear that "there's not much we can do when it's like this" there are in fact tasks that are specifically planned or targeted around weather like this. 

Hopefully, that's a bit of insight into the perhaps unseen part of our work as we understand that not all golfers can be aware of every last thing we do.

All the best

Ben