Old Course greenkeeping blog

Greenkeeping Blog - Turf Nursery Prep

During the winter, we used a considerable amount of turf building bunkers etc on the course, so now we have started our re-instatement of the nursery. At the moment we are screening topsoil at our nurseries to remove stones before stone burying the site and sowing the area with seed for use in future years. This is quite a long process made even worse by recent rainfall.

Back on the course we are busy shaping bunkers after the high winds at the weekend and concentrating on cutting programmes. Later this week, we will hopefully start some spraying to eradicate weed activity on fairways and roughs.

This coming Sunday we host the annual Gold Medal over the course to find the champion golfer of St Andrews.

Medal Week on the Old Course

This week sees one of the local clubs, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, playing on the Old Course in their annual spring medal.

With a field of 657 golfers playing over the course of the week, my team on the Links have had a busy schedule setting up the course for play each morning.

The weather has been good to us so far this week but it looks likely rain may sweep in from the south towards the end of the week.

While the course is busy with competition golf this week we are taking the opportunity to prepare machines and do some general tidying of the maintenance facility.

Next week it will be back to normal with a busy schedule of golfers on the course. We plan on carrying out some remedial works on walkways by way of aerating, seeding and top dressing to promote some stronger grass coverage in these areas.

Here's hoping the weather is kinder than the forecast for the next few days!

Gordon

Greenkeeping Blog - Organic Matter Testing

The weather has been colder for the past couple of weeks which has knocked growing conditions back, however work continues to present courses to high standard for season ahead.

Recently we have had our annual visit from STRI to evaluate conditions on the course. This year I will have four visits as we build up to 2015 Open and start to evaluate the course condition at certain times of the year. The visit has been very positive as one of our main objectives recently has been to reduce organic matter levels in the top 20mm of the soil profile to help further improve playing conditions on the greens. This has been achieved by further increasing our top dressing levels to these areas over the winter and this seems to be working very well. Later this week I plan to take further samples from greens which have not been tested recently so we can see how they have been progressing and built up a more consistent picture of green performance.

Elsewhere, we are busy with early season preparation on the course with all areas been mown on a regular basis. Wetting agents are being applied, overseeding and top dressing to true surfaces and achieving strong grass cover for the season ahead.

Seasonal staff have arrived and are settling in well to the team, our Sunday work schedules are underway with regular divotting of fairways as well as many other maintenance tasks being undertaken.

The season ahead looks to be very busy and we are very much looking forward to preparing the course for all the lucky golfers who will get the chance to grace our fine fairways!

Gordon

Sand, sand and more sand!

We are carrying out final preparations on the course during our final winter closure. At the moment we are top dressing greens and surrounds and over the weekend all the fairways were top dressed with over 100 tonnes of sand. This is an important part of our maintenance plan to help firm and refine surfaces to what we would desire prior to main playing season commencing. This year’s closure work has gone to schedule due to the fine weather we have had. This will also help with course conditioning.

Over the next few weeks we will be upping our presentation regimes as growth dictates and we head to 1st April when the high season begins. Seasonal staff will start to arrive on 16th April from various parts of the world to assist us through the summer months.

The plan over the next few weeks will be to start fine tuning playing surfaces with applications of wetting agents to greens and fairways, a light early season feed applied to greens and light top dressing of greens, surrounds and tees will continue through to early May.

Enjoy your early season golf and we hope to see you all here soon!

Gordon

Greenkeeping Blog - Spring Aeration

Yesterday we started work on the greens and today we will finish that work with a roll of the greens to smooth off before we open up again in the morning. Fairways are being pencil tined over the next couple of weeks before we begin top dressing in mid-March. We will also be preparing the newly built bunkers by shaping the bases prior to sand being added ahead of the new season play in April.

The weather has been kind to us this winter and we have seen dry conditions over the last few weeks with very little in the way of rainfall. Only 13mm of rain in February compared to 17.5mm in Jan and 47mm in December last year. So with the drying winds and little moisture we are irrigating our newly laid turfed areas to keep them from drying out!

Hope to see you all out on the course soon.

Gordon