Greens Renovations

Greens renovations: two words which golfers don't enjoy too much. Our growth levels mean we need to remove excess organic matter from the greens which renovations provide. The end result are better greens, for your enjoyment. We don't go out in the heat and humidity and work hard on the greens for us, we do it for you.

So today, we commence our greens renovations. The poor weather of late last week resulted in a change of procedures for today as we did not know what the weather had in store for us. So the procedure today will be as follows:

- Verticut the greens: We will be using verti-cutting heads in the greens mowers instead of the walk behind unit and verti-cutting the greens to a depth of around -5mm. Verti-cutting means vertical mowing, straight down. After one pass we will assess the results and determine whether we make a second pass. By using the heads on the greens mowers, it will mean we will get across the greens fast.

- Clean up cut: Once we finish verti-cutting, we mow the green to standard height which currently is 3mm.

- Aerate: Very important. Aeration provides a number of benefits for a golf green such as increasing the oxygen levels in the soil; encouraging deeper root systems; reducing compaction; improving water infiltration through the profile; and so on. This is where our major change is. We were initially going to use a hollow tyne and remove plugs from the green. To clean them up they need to be dry. But due to the rain last week we were concerned that if we remove plugs and could not get them dry then we would have made alot of mess on the putting surfaces which takes longer to get back to good condition. Therefore, we have switched coring tynes to solid tynes, which still provide the above benefits, but also don't leave any mess as we are not pulling material out.

- Topdress: The greens will receive a light topdress to promote surface smoothness.

As we are using our ride on mowers for the verti-cutting we will get over the greens faster. Therefore, we probably will not stop after 9 holes today (front) as originally expected. We do not know what the weather will bring so we will no doubt press on as the day progresses. Please check with the pro-shop to our current status if you are intending on playing.