Course Maintenance

It's the time of year again greenkeepers both love and hate. As we hopefully emerge from the ravishes of winter and spring is nearly upon us, meaning better growing conditions & recovery from damage to the course from winter play. It's also the time when we start preparing the course for the forthcoming season. At  Muswell Hill that means we have the opportunity to work on the course during course maintenance week with the knowledge that any golfer disruption has been pre planned..!!!
This course maintenance our greens program will involve sand, sand & more sand, to quote a famous Scottish greenkeeper, and lots of holes. The greens will be top dressed, verti drained, top dressed again and then solid tined.
All these works are aimed at providing the best possible playing surfaces at Muswell Hill for the forthcoming golfing season.

Below is a brief explanation of the tasks we will be carrying out this week -

Solid Tine - These tines range from 8mm in diameter and are generally 6 inches in length. 

Verti Drain - This form of aeration uses a long 12inch tine, 18mm in diameter that penetrates through the entire depth of the rootzone profile. There is a small amount of disruption to the surface whilst we carry out this operation however once the green has been lightly rolled the quality of the surface is back to where it was before the operation took place.

Top Dressing - This term covers the application of sand to the surface of the turf for the purposes of smoothing the surface and enhancing thatch decomposition in turn leading to firm and smooth putting surfaces. 

Granular feeds will also be applied to the surfaces to aid recovery and generally make the grass plant healthier.

The rest of the playing surfaces will also be worked on this week with the focus after the greens on the aprons and green surrounds.

And the reason why Greenkeepers 'hate' this time of year.......

A certain golf tournament that is played this time of year, that although we all aspire too, sometimes we just have to appreciate that some things just have more mowers than we do.....