South Herts Golf Club
🌼 Skipping into Spring 🌼
🌼 Skipping into Spring 🌼
Green Newsletter - March
I hope this finds you and your family well and enjoying the early spring sunshine.
I’m pleased to inform you that we have been able to strengthen our team for the summer by welcoming Tim Grant as a casual green keeper until the end of November. Tim is a keen golfer and will be tasked with day-to-day presentational aspects such as divoting and course set-up
The green staff have started Spring with a big push to maximise the recent warm weather. With no rainfall for nine straight days and above average daytime temperatures this has allowed the team to achieve all the goals set out in the annual maintenance plan.
All green complexes have received a micro hollow tining with two sand dressings, the team have also applied a spring granular fertiliser along with a systemic fungicide greatly aided by a deep aeration using our new air2G2 machine. This will help provide us with strong and healthy playing surfaces for the season ahead
Tees, collars, and approaches have also received a deep aeration and their first hand cut of the season. To aid the appearance of our teeing areas and to help guard against increased damage throughout our season there will be daily divoting during morning set up.
As we transition into our season the White tees have been reinstated for use including the 3rd and 16th tees and our grass practice range tee will re-open shortly.
With the reduction in use, our yellow tees will now receive their spring renovation after a heavy winter’s play. All yellow teeing areas will receive a deep hollow tining and scarification followed by overseeding and top dressing using a controlled release fertiliser.
During last week, all Fairways were raked to remove dead and dying grass/organic matter and to scatter the last of the worm casts, then blown clean before cutting.
In preparation for the summer, our irrigation system has been started up after its winter hibernation and as usual we face the challenge of pre-season electrical fault and water burst fixing. This is a task made easier by the expertise of Ben and Barry. I’m delighted to say all our new greens sprinklers have been installed throughout the Vardon course and lower putting green and we should see a marked return for this investment.
Although the weather remains dry in the current forecast the temperature decrease to below the monthly average during the night-time will produce night frosts, this will hamper the spring progress of the courses especially our putting surfaces. To help increase the speed we have lowered the height of cut to 4mm and applied our front mounted groomer units to all the green mowers along with an increased use of the greens roller.
Finally, new hole cups and flag pennants will be out to mark the start of our season, all penalty areas posts will be cleaned and re-sprayed to freshen up the course appearance.
Enjoy your Golf.
John Wells Course Manager MG.
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