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