December 2016.

It’s been another busy autumn on the golf course. With September just a blur of competitions and societies, we had to wait until October to get stuck into autumn maintenance.

All areas of the golf course were verti drained and slit tined, this is done to relieve compaction and improve water movement through the soil profile. We have also applied sand to walkways, wet parts of the course and any other high traffic areas. This is all done to help keep the course dry and surfaces playable for as long as possible.

A worm suppressant was applied to the fairways, first cuts and approaches. This prevents the worms from casting, keeping the playing surface cleaner, improving surface drainage and making it less susceptible to disease and weed infestation. Unfortunately, due to new regulations we will no longer be able to use this product to control worm casting as of August 2017. This is one of many products/active ingredients that have been removed from the list of approved pesticides, reducing our ability to control weeds, pests and diseases, which in turn makes it increasingly more difficult to produce a high quality playing surface. We are however looking in to how we can use other methods to reduce the impact and still produce a good and improving playing surface. 

At the end of October the greens got some special attention. Continuing the fight against moss, we applied a heavy iron to knock the moss back before scarifying, verti cutting and hollow coring. The greens were then over seeded with Bent grass, top dressed with straight sand, and an organic fertiliser was applied to help recovery and germination. I understand that this work can be very disruptive, but is necessary if we want to keep improving the greens.

In November we started reshaping the back of the 9th green and extending the putting green. These are very much still ongoing, but we plan to have both projects turfed or at least ready for turf before Christmas. Five new tees are now all but ready for turf/seed and should also be done before Christmas.

Other areas you may have noticed around the course…a small area to the right of the 11th green has been dug over in preparation for planting gorse and the path on the left of the 12th green has been filled in and is now ready to be seeded.

At some point in December the trees on the left of the 7th green will be thinned out. The green has been suffering in recent years due to surface water running off the steep bank on the right and being in constant shade from the trees on the left. By thinning out the trees we hope to allow more light and air to get to and around the green, improving the turf quality and overall appearance.

See our Golf Gallery for photographs of the course. Some of the photos are out of date as we are improving the course, but we will keep updating them.