Killermont update!!!

 Course update!!!

It’s been a really challenging week for the team with continued low staffing levels and some guys on holiday, but the guys filling in stepped up brilliantly👏👏👏

There is now the added workload on the course which does take priority of hand water tees etc…. The course is really starting to dry out now and we are losing 2 men each morning to hand watering tees and various hot spots throughout the course, during these dry weeks hand watering takes priority and obviously that means something in our cutting routine has to give, this week it was the flymowing of bunkers and divot seeding fairways (both planned for next week).

We did so well to recover a large percentage of  lost coverage last year from the heat wave of summer of 2021, we have been out on top of watering the usual dry spots very early this year trying to build up the moisture levels to be able to maintain coverage…. 

We are confident we will keep the greens, surrounds, tees and approaches, but we will almost certainly struggle to keep full coverage the fairways bunker surrounds, and the old fairway drainage which is already on the turn. We have something up our sleeve to combat the drainage but it will still use man power that we just don’t have at present, we will report back on that. 

We have now raised the  heights of cut on almost all surface’s. The fairways up to 17mm from 15mm,  to help maintain coverage while dry. If we were blessed with fairway irrigation we would be down as low as 14mm or less, but without means of maintaining moisture the only measure of protection is the heights of cut. 

We will be cutting half of the 17th fairway at 15mm just as an example of the stress this  “desired” height of cut has in the prolonged dry conditions. 

Tees and approaches have been raised 1mm to 12mm for the same reason. 

Surrounds back up to 25mm from 23mm. 

Greens, 

We are in the peak season for poa annual meadow grass seeding, it is fairly wide spread so we have kept the greens lean and below our usual nutritional levels just to help maintain trueness and speeds which we have managed quite well, averaging (11.5 since) since the stewart cup with just a single cut at 3mm.

But we have since begun to bring the nutritional levels up with a spray mix application today. We should start to see the greens look a lot healthier but lose some natural speed, we will have other measures to try and and maintain our targets of  (10.5-11)

For this reason we think it is important we update the greens speeds on club 1 each morning just to prepare golf of average speeds, as opposed to the shock on the 1st green, especially for medals and events. 

We have put some extra work into the 18th green with light aeration and heavy sand dressings to the new drainage, just to try and level out some imperfections levels. We will be working the excess sand in over the next week or so, it will be good and clean before the captains prize and medal weekend. 

Killermont Greens Team 🌱⛳️😎

  Killermont Course update!

It’s been another busy week for the guys on the course as we are now juggling all of our cutting routines with hand watering tees and other areas like practice greens without irrigation as the moisture levels have dropped of considerably. This work takes priority during dry spells so some of our outstanding workload list won’t be getting ticked off for this reason. 

We did however take the hit on course works on Thursday with 4 members of staff filling pot holes on the drive out to the field, it was long overdue. That was 34 hrs the course lost but it was required. 

Ricky also did a great job with the main welcome sign beside the 17th medal tee. 

It had been knocked over and damaged from a vehicle, he took it apart, restored it with a coat of varnish, great job!!

This weeks workload 

Greens single cut at 3.5mm 6 days this week with one rest day on Thursday. 

We are maintaining good consistency with greens speeds now with an average reading of 10.8 on the stimp meter since the week of stewart cup. 

Sprayed greens foliar application growth regulator to suppress the seed heads.

Greens sprayed bio stimulant for improved soil and root development. 

weed kill spray around clubhouse and all path ways around the course. We hand pulled most of the 7th path and sprayed to tough part. 

We are on top of all of our weekly cutting routines across all surfaces… 

Greens 6x

Tees 3x 

Approaches 3x

surrounds 2x 

fairways 2x

semi rough and practice ranges 1x 

flymowing bunker faces & 

various strimming 

cut the main lawns at rose cottage 

tee set up and seed divot 4x 

fairway landing zones seed divot 

holes change  3x this week after tomorrow’s Munro kerr set up. 

Full bunker rake Monday & Friday, touched up every other day, we are planning to redistribute sand levels from next week (very labour intensive) 

it will be noticed that we have begun to process of seed and rootzone dressing all imperfections on and off surrounds now that the temps are favourable, we should see all of these areas fill out moving into June, we will continue this process throughout the season working our way out from surrounds, to fairways and walk offs, fairway bunker surrounds and then out semi rough weak spots until we achieve full coverage across the course. 

 Gailes Course Update

The green keeping team have worked well and have shown good commitment carrying out their tasks on a daily basis which I think showed for the April Medal & the Edward Trophy.

Mild liquid fertilisers will continue to be applied to greens, tees, surrounds, approaches, fairways & semi-rough, our wetting agent programme will continue to the same areas within the course excluding semi-rough. Semi – rough does not receive any irrigation therefore it would be a waste of product, time and money applying wetters to these areas, to install irrigation within the semi-rough would cost around 200k to 300k.

The greens, tees, approaches & surrounds will receive their first compound fertiliser which will be organic based low nitrogen fertiliser, the new 6^th tee will receive slightly more fertiliser than the other tees just to help the turf recovery on the tee. The 6^th tee will take another few months to grow in and establish good root growth,  we need to be patient and remember this tee was only completed 5 months ago most of which time were the cold dormant winter months.

Greens & approaches will continue to be top dressed lightly with sand every 3 to 4 weeks, due to how busy the course is where possible this might be carried out later in the day.

 

 Course update!

It’s been a busy one on the course this week with some good morning set ups ahead of both our Ladies day and then the Tuesday medal. 

All greens cut and rolled, holes changed, all fairways and approaches cut both mornings ahead of golf and bunkers fully prepared  with a tees set up. 

Tees and surrounds were cut on alternative days Monday & Tuesday morning. 

We cut all the fairways for the 3rd day in a row on Wednesday in preparation for our first growth regulator and nutritional spray mix application which went out straight behind the mowers. 

We also made a start divoting fairways. 

We completed the fairway divot this Friday PM. 

Wednesday into Thursday 

We took the flymows to all bunker and tee banks. 

We cut the surrounds for a second time this week in the afternoon since we dropped the height of cut, we wanted a good dry cut with no moisture from morning dew.

Greens the same, cut in the morning and then again in the afternoon at lower height of cut 3.75mm.

All semi rough was cut Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we cut the practice range field. 

The semi rough is realy struggling to get moving with the current temperatures, we hadn’t planned to feed the rough as wasn’t required last year but we are now considering applying some granular outfield fertiliser to selective weak semi-rough areas to push things along. 

We are now planning to have the driving range floor and the little short holes cut down with the fairway mowers and on to the same cutting routines as the fairway mowing, this should see a big improvement and should in time replicate close to the fairways on the course, We do accept that we haven’t given the field much input as we always priorities the course and then do what we can on the range with what time we have left over, cutting the field equates to the loss of one man for 1.5 days if we cut all surfaces,  bringing the fairway mowers in should cut that loss back a tad but it is very labour intensive for the quality of the facility. 

The driving range floor has been cut down already for the first time, so isn’t looking the best and needs a tidy up, please bare with it until Monday please.

We have already seen a great turf response to our recent Base granular fertiliser applications applied last week on greens, tees, approaches and surrounds and walk offs etc… All of these surfaces have already started to improve on density meaning we are now able to start the process of getting our cutting heights down at last. 

It would have been noticed that our heights of cut weren’t as they where this time last year. The reason being the temperatures are around 4 weeks behind on last year and low heights of cut on the turf when they aren’t able to respond to nutrient intake can have a negative impact on the turf and really set us back for the season ahead.

However the turf has now responded and we have begun the process of lowering heights this week.

Greens from 4.5-3.75mm (working down to 3.5)

Tees and approaches 13mm-12mm, (planning for 11mm) 

Surrounds 30mm down to 25mm ( we will attempt to get down to 22mm depending on how the turf responds to each 1mm incriminate. 

We will drop the fairways down from 16mm to 14mm next week, which we will try to maintain unless we hit a dry spell in which case they will pop back up to 15 or even 16mm depending on how dry it gets. 

Heights  of cut have a massive impact of turf quality and coverage can be lost very quickly, but not so easily recovered if the heights are below the stress levels, especially in a dry spell. 

We appreciate and share the frustration when the course isn’t where we would like it to be due to the temperatures but the turf has begun to respond so we will now go from strength to strength. 

We are always keen to hear our members feedback on course set up and conditions and if there some consistent constructive feedback we will always asses what can be done to improve if required.

Have a look at the 12th fairway last year during a lengthy dry spell, we decided to cut half of the fairway at 14mm and didn’t cut the other half. You can clearly see the stress signs after one day, if we  had  continued to mow at that height regularly we would 100% have lost coverage very quickly. 

Glasgow green team

🌱⛳️🏌️‍♂️😎