Target Greens

Why are we on target Greens ?

Just a quick blog on -

How can a footprint be a killer?

When it's a footprint made on a putting surface that's covered with frost. 

It's hard to believe that simply walking across a golf green covered with frost can cause so much damage, but the proof will be there in a few days as the turf grass dies and leaves a trail of brown footprints.

That's why most courses will delay starting times until the frost has melted. We at Muswell 

Hill G.C do not want to have frost delays but require target greens to allow early morning play. 

This will help give us a better playing surface in the season. 

Why does frost cause problems?

Greens are fragile. The putting surface, or green, is an extremely fragile environment that must be managed carefully and professionally. 

Remember that every green is a collection of millions of individual grass plants, each of which is a delicate living thing. Obviously, Mother Nature never meant for these plants to be maintained at 3 mm or even 6mm for prolonged periods. This stress makes greens constantly vulnerable to attacks from insects, disease, heat, drought, cold and frost.

Frost is essentially frozen dew. It can form when the temperature (or wind chill) is near or

below the freezing point. 

The ice crystals that form on the outside of the plant can also harden

or even freeze the cell structure of the plant. When frosted, the normally resilient plant cells

become brittle and are easily crushed . When the cell membranes are damaged, the plant loses

its ability to function normally. 

It's not much different than cracking an egg. Once the shell is broken, you can't put it back together. Added to this when greens are not completely thawed you get a frost layering in the soil structure. This can mean that the top 2 inches are not frozen but the rest is. 

This is when ROOTSHEAR happens. Basically your body weight will move the top 2 inches as you walk across the green but the rest will not move as it’s frozen. This makes the two layers tear apart, destroying the root system in the greens. 

The proof is in the prints

Although you won't see any immediate damage if you walk on frosted turf, the proof will emerge within 48 to 72 hours as the leaves die and turn brown. And, since just one foursome can leave several hundred footprints on each green, the damage can be very extensive.

Thanks for understanding

The damage isn't just unsightly -putting quality will also be reduced until repairs are made.

Those repairs are expensive and, in some cases, the green may have to be kept out of play for days or weeks until the new turf grass is established. Having target greens for a while till the frost melts canpreserve the quality of the greens, prevent needless repairs and may even save you a few strokes the next time you play.

Thanks 

Matt 

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all the greenstaff. 

For those of you who may be interested about last nights weather below are some pictures.

The nets took the worst of the wind and are now bent and mangled. These will remain closed. The new ones will be built very soon. 

The course was flooded by the 41mm on top of the 66mm from the previous week. 

Back to the Christmas cheer. 

Enjoy your time with your family's and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Matt 

Winter solstice

I thought I would just do a little blog and talk about what sort of things we have been doing lately. 

The leaves have finally fallen so the autumnal views have subsided for that wintry feeling. Added to this the rain has decided to start falling at high rates again. We ve had over 66mm in one week. That's more rain than we got in November.

(Above you can see the short day light hours). 

It's not all bad news, the winter solstice has gone. On the 21st December at 5.11pm the sun 'stood still' and then started to move north heralding longer days in the northern hemisphere.

Bring on the lighter evenings!! 

Leaf clearing has been going on all over the place all the little corners have been cleared. There may be some woodland areas that will need attention in the new year but a lot have been collected. 

Clearing around the car park and trolley sheds.

Ditch clearing seems like a daily task at the moment

The compost areas are looking pretty full too

Greens

More hand cutting of the greens

Followed by an application of dew cure. This is a great product which reduces the dew on the greens. A dew will normally form around midnight and sit on the leaf making it wet until we brush them off in morning. This can increase disease risk. So when the growth rates drop off we apply this product which coats the leaf of the grass plant with a wax like product, making the leaf shed the moisture. Leaving them dew free for up to two weeks. (See below, even during the fog this helps keep the moisture at bay and reduces the disease pressure).

 

 

Repairing fox damage to the 13th green has been a daily task. We are now spraying the greens with a chemical to change the scent to try and stop this behaviour. 

I wish I could spray something to stop these being left behind :-) another daily repair unfortunately 

In other areas

Cutting broken branches that were hanging over the 14th green

Roping wet areas off to try flow course traffic away from wet areas, this keeps the golfer cleaner and reduces damage to the course. 

The leak on the drinking fountain has finally been fixed now it's been drained down for the winter.

You may have also noticed the new winter mat base on the 4th (we are still waiting in the mat after a manufacturing fault) but have you noticed our first movable bridge on the 9th. This allows us to shut the other bridges/ pinch points off to reduce damage and move the bridge around meaning we are spreading the wear. 

I think it looks great and does a perfect job. 

This is just a trail one built by our very own members Danny Rowland and Terry Ray. Good work guys. 

That's enough from me, I m going back to look at the weather warnings.

Matt 

New tees

The new tees at the 3rd, 4th and 5th have all been completed finally, after a very wet October and beginning of November the weather has turned in our favour and allowed us to laser level the tees and turf them. 

The tees at the 3rd and 4th have been moved over to the left, with the angle of play changing on these holes to make them more of a dogleg. This encourages players to hit up the right hand side of the fairways (away from the houses), giving the best line in to the greens. This is all part of the long term course improvements plan put together by our course architect. 

Moving the tees will compliment the bunkering that was carried out on these holes last year. 

3rd Tee

The front corner of the tee was remodelled along, the mound removed

The turf off the old tee area was lifted and used around the course.

The soils from the mound and corner of the yellow tee were used as a subsoil base for the new teeing area left

Finally once the rain stop and the tee dried out the irrigation was added and the top soil was added and shaped

The tee was then laser levelled and  turfed with big roll. This allows us to turf high amounts of turf quickly and with less manual handling for the staff. The tee looks great and has become one of our biggest on the course.

4th 

One of the major tasks we had to do on the 4th was to remove the some scrub and trees that were blocking the line off the new tee. As you can see a lot of land was gained back. 

Again the turf was lifted and used on other areas. The rootzone was then run in and spread around 

 We then cultivated and laser levelled and turfed.

5th

The new tee at the 5th was built forward, this will create a new blue tee at the back with the whites moving forward. Again this was part of the plans by Ken Moodie, the greens Commitee and the board. 

By reducing the length of club required at  the hole not only improves our variety of lengths of the pars 3's but reduces the risk of balls leaving the boundary. 

A lot of work soil movement was required to build this tee in particular. We required 140 cubic metres just for the base. 

The mound on the left of the 8th was the perfect size to be moved over. This also improved the view from the 8th tee. 

The base was then built up in layers

The irrigation was then added before the rootzones were added

The tee was then laser levelled  

Then turfed and rolled. 

Summary 

During the renovation of these tees we- 

• Moved over 300 cubic metres of subsoil

• 160 tonnes of rootzone was placed on the new tees

• Removed trees and scrub to give the new tees the land required and these were moved to the compost area

• Added or extended the irrigation to all the new tees

• Laser levelled all the tees

• 1300 metres of big roll dwarf rye turf laid

• Used the turf from the tees to repair other areas around the course

• Tidied and repaired the sites after we finished

The new tees will be ready in the spring and I think they will add to the already great improvements to those holes. 

With most of the winter projects being completed earlier in the winter than last year is fantastic. This gives the golf course a rest from heavy traffic and minimises damage. It allows us to repair areas around the course, clear leaves and work on the woodland areas in the coming months. We will also start building our material bays in the new year. So no rest for the wicked ;-) 

Sorry about the longest blog ever! 

Matt 

Leaf Wars

As a golfer there is nothing more annoying than hitting that great shot, getting your line and walking up to that area to lose the ball under the leaves!  

But as greenkeepers on parkland courses will tell you there is nothing more annoying than leaves...

With the mild autumn slowly cooling down we are carrying on our daily battles with the leaves. 

Some of you may have noticed our presents over the weekend as the greenstaff tried to clear the greens and as much of the course as we could. The fact that shorter day light hours, with sunrise around 7.30am means we start on the course a lot later than the summer. 

We then try to work in hole order to keep a head of the golfers off the 1st tee at 8am. We also have to be aware of the local residents as they don't want to hear blowers going for hours next to there houses at dawn. So sometimes we come back to the 2nd and 3rd, depending on the amount of debris down.

Please bare in mind that we are also trying to get all the normal weekend works done along with the leaf clearing and this period doesn't last to long. The winter solstice is only days away and then we will start to get more day light hours (slowly). I am definitely looking on the positive here. 

So what are we doing all the time at the moment? 

Finding greens like this in the morning!

We then hand blow the greens off. We do this by hand to reduce the amount of compaction to the greens the machines would cause over the winter. 

Once the greens are clear we then blow the green surrounds and aprons. 

We then dewie and dew off the greens. This is part of our IPM or integrated pest (disease) management. In other words it reduces the moisture on the leaf and that in turn reduces the risk of disease. It also improves the putting surface. 

Now I can hear you thinking why don't they cut? We cut the greens less in the winter due to growth rates dropping off. We aim to cut once or twice a week, even when there's not a lot of growth as the roll improves the ball roll. 

Anyway back to leaves- 

We then use the bigger blowers to move the leaves into lines along the fairways 

These are then sucked up using our brush vacuum or Trilo. 

This sucks the leaves up and shreds them as it fills the back container. As you can tell this is a heavy piece of equipment  and it takes longer than you think to pick up the leaves. This normally takes us four to six weeks to get them all up. But (hopefully) we are at the halfway stage right now. 

These are then taken to an area for us to compost them (up to 10 loads a day).

We also use the hose attachment on the Trilo to clear the ditches. This is a two man job and can take all day. So it's about trying to find the balance and keep on top of the key playing areas. 

(Normally by this point the wind starts and we start again) 

I hope this gives you a little insight to what we are doing to clear leaves and we are not just blowing them around in the wind.

In a couple of weeks they will all be down and tidied away and we can start thinking about next season. 

Matt