Course Managers Report - Around the Greens in December 2022

November delivered 42.6mm of rain. I didn’t think I’d be saying it at this time but we could actually use a little more rain!

Strong winds throughout the month, coupled with the low rainfall have dried the course out considerably. 12mm of rain at the very end of the month was a nice little top up for the dam and helped flush the greens.

The greens have come through November looking and performing very well. Renovations were carried out mid-month and were disrupted by 30mm of rain half way through. This forced us to delay top dressing by a few days, slowing the recovery of the surface. With this in mind, greens have still recovered very well. Strong winds through the second half of the month caused some disruption to our spray program on greens. Fortunately we were up to date with our pesticide program so no disease or pest outbreaks occurred. We did see however, a slight increase in growth, and therefore a reduction in green speed, due to being unable to apply plant growth regulators. Going forward, greens will be dusted monthly during the growing season along with continuing our soil amendment program.

Most of our tees have come or are coming back very well. Except for the 3^rd tee, and to a lesser extent the 12^th and 15^th tees. The 3^rd tee was over sown with Couch seed but we have not seen a good result, so we’ll be turfing the back half of that tee in December. 

We have seen great improvement in damaged areas on fairways. The patches were aerated with a  Ventrac, with the worst areas being seeded with a mixture of Kikuyu and Couch seed. Germination of seed in these areas has been quite good given the difficulty we’ve had keeping them moist. Recovery of existing grass in and around the patches has been amazing after the aeration was carried out. The 11^th fairway was hit with this also and is coming along well, albeit slowly. 

Shay Tasker

Course Manager