Crows pecking

Crows have been creating a lot of additional work over the last few weeks. They have been pecking on a few selected greens, tees and fairways on all of the 3 courses. This is very unusual and  worrying. It could be connected to increased populations of the leather jacket grub within the soil profile (these grubs turn into crane flys) or it could be a one off but I very much doubt that. All of the chemicals approved to kill of the grubs are no longer available so this may be a taste of what is to come?

I

Replacing faulty sprinklers

After 11 years of use, some of the gear driven sprinklers are needing replaced. We have had to replace 3 this years which isn't bad. In the good old days you were able to tweak the impact lever or tighten up the springs to keep the impact sprinklers going. It's a totally different story with the new gear driven sprinklers, once they go, they go, can't tweak things on those sprinklers.

Thats a weed and a feed onto all of the areas cut with the fairway mowers on No1, the daisies should be curling up by tomorrow and slowly dying off. There is nothing worse than seeing the white flowering heads fully opened on a sunny day.

2016 machinery purchases

Two Toro 5550 fairway mowers replaced two larger 4 wheeled fairway mowers. These are the lightest fairway mowers on the market which combined with the slick tyres and smooth front rollers will reduce wear damage around the bunkers. These two mowers also have smaller cutting heads which will allow these units to follow the contours better than the larger head fairway mowers. Both of these machines will be slower in terms of cutting speeds and the smaller boxes will fill up with clippings quicker which is not great in terms of productivity so to compensate for this loss, grass clipping trailers have been bought to allow the guys to tip clippings into a trailer on the same fairway they are working on. They would normally have to travel back and fourth to grass bays spread around the course which takes up valuable time. These mowers are for use on the No1 course.

This is a photo of our older cutting units with a grooved front roller, these rollers sit into the surface more which gives you a tighter cut but it does lead to turf damage around bunker tops and edges.
We replaced our 7 head fairway mower on the No2 course with the excellent Toro 5010 hybrid fairway mower. These mowers were used at Augusta to cut their fairways. We had two or three of these mowers in for the Scottish Open last year and I was very impressed with them. The benefits of this mower compared to what we had before are 1) No oil leaks from the motors because the reels are powered electronically instead of the conventional hydraulically driven cylinders 2) Less wear and tear around bunkers as we have changed from the grooved front rollers to the smooth front rollers 3) Offers better contour following than our previous mowers. The only down side to this mower will be, it is less productive with only having 5 cutting heads compared to the 7 heads they had before but to speed up this task we purchased a grass collection trailer for this mower also.
5 Cushman electric buggies  replaced the identical petrol driven buggies. The benefits of of these purchases are 1) No noise  2) Significant reduction in our annual petrol usage 3) Reduction in service intervals.    
This workhorse is the Toro 4700 semi rough mower, this is shared between the 3 courses. It also cuts additional off course areas like the Kids course, car parks and areas on the hill. We replace this machine every 4 years because it does rack up the hours.
And last but not least, here are the 4 lightweight grass clipping trailers for the fairway mowers but can also be used for other tasks around the courses.

Paul and his team have been busy with trying to sort out a drainage issue at the hollow at the back of the 13th green. This area did have old clay drains in it but they were all clogged up. The soil within the hollow was made up of a sand/soil and clay mix which is very unusual on any of our courses, maybe it was intentionally done to hold water and to prevent it from going onto the green?? Thankfully the rest of the line away from the hollow is pure sand. The boys have removed all of the old drains out and replaced them with a perforated pipe and pea gravel mix, they have also attached a non perforated pipe and ran that to a soak-away sump, which was filled up will around 3000 old range balls. The boys will remove the heavier soil and replace it with sand which will help with the filtration rates and lead to a drier hollow. We will also put in an inspection chamber in the rough so we can keep the pipe clear.

What a difference in 8 years, the 12th looks like a tree lined parkland course in the first picture, the 2nd picture definitely looks like it should, LIKE A LINKS COURSE. Great to see progress being made.

Another wee dusting of sand going onto No1 greens this morning.