Glasgow Golf Club: killermont course update

Killermont course update!

It’s been a very productive week on the course. The team worked tirelessly trialing a new maintenance procedure on Monday morning undertaking some essential greens maintenance, we also managed to install all new drainage and some irrigation pipe work repairs to the right and back of the 1st green.

And somehow managed to keep up with all of our cutting routines, solid effort once again from this team!!!

For Greens maintenance on Monday we decided we would try a new procedure as we now have the full team in place the intention was to try and undertake essential maintenance work with as little disruption to golf as possible.

It was bound to be a long morning so we took our food out on the course to try and keep ahead of golf to job and finish.

It was an early start for Craig who nominated himself to come in at 4.30 am to start the pencil aeration to the greens…

The rest of us in at 5.00.

Martin 2x scarified the greens removing a full gator load of organic matter every 3 greens.

Gavin 2x verti cut removing 3 gator loads of undesirable lateral growth and broad leaf plants which will refine our growth and make a perfect bed for sand application.

Peter then 2x cut the greens to lift any excess and leave the greens tidy.

Ryan then sand dressed the greens with approx 0.7 Tonnes of sand per green.

Fraser,Andrew, & Olly would run the drag mat to level sand and blow any excess debris off the greens and surround.

Paul then hand watered in the sand to soak the sand down off the leaf into the soil.

That for us has been a game changer, as Sand is a very essential element in any agronomy program but it is also very disruptive and abrasive to the plant when being brushed in and more so to the blades when it sits on the surface for days on end, but blasting it down with water had the greens playing the same morning with minimal disruption to golf…

We are delighted how well the process worked.

The team worked from 5.00-11.30 without a break and got themselves home for a well earned rest.

Drainage and irrigation 1st surrounds.

This area to the right of 1st green in between the 2 tees has been a very problematic area for some time so we decided that as we have the full team in place we could do what ever was required to get this area up to standard all ahead of this weekends pros day and should be close to full recovery for club championships and members guest day.

We didn’t manage to start lifting the turf until Wednesday afternoon as we caught up on our cutting routines Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

We have since cut away all saturated turf, hand dug out 3-4” of thatch, hand dug out the old drainage profile, found some leaking irrigation pipe work and inadequate drainage for the area being situated in a low spot and under a lot of water pressure in high rainfall.

We repaired the irrigation leak, installed a good specification of drain pipe, gravel and levelled and capped the area with rootzone and re-turfed it with some similar turf species from the surrounds of the practice green right of 2nd green, we will replace this early next week with the best quality turf we can find down on the practice field.

That is now two really problematic areas at the back of the 13th & the 1st now marked as GUR only, now both are on the road to recovery, great effort from the team.

This week’s working

Greens maintenance

greens sprayed nutritional mix to aid recovery.

Note: height of cut raised this week to 3.5mm until sand free so running a tad slower this week, averaging (9.5-10)

1st drainage & irrigation renovations

Tees and approaches cut 3x

fairways cut 2x

surrounds 2x cut

semi rough and plantations cut

tee banks and signage fly mowed & strimmed

All practice range surfaces cut

selective fairways divot