Well here we are, summer is almost over and we are now moving into our preparations for the Autumn/Winter. It has been a long summer, with lots of work being carried out in the process.

 

With the course being in good shape from the beginning of the season and in even better condition now we all ask ourselves that question, why this year, and why not every year ? Well it has been mainly down to the winter (good snow-coverage all winter) which has favoured the poa (tunrap) on our fairways and tees. With us having a good coverage of this plant in the spring time it has given us a lot more to work with throughout the season. But, don’t think it has just happened overnight with minimal effort! It has still taken us greenkeepers a lot of work to get the surfaces to a good playable condition!

 

Our autumn preparations include making plans for aeration of all fine turf areas, building the strength of the greens to put them into winter as strong as possible, planning for and carrying out seasonal projects and also moving forward with the plans for the re construction and drainage on hole 1.

 

The tender documents for construction on green 1 are now sent out to our preferred contractors, and we will be moving forward with finalising the plans and negotiations in the coming weeks. The work is scheduled to be started around the end of September, and the opening of the new green is scheduled to be beginning of June 2011.

 

Work completed lately:

 

Spraying for clover and weeds

 

Generally speaking August has been quite wet, which has left us with some challenges in keeping on top of the mowing, as everything is growing like crazy! Both bunker and road washouts have consumed a number of man hours, as it takes a lot of work to get them back to the standard expected. Some fairways are also sitting relatively wet as they are saturated to full capacity now. We will be starting a program to help us alleviate this problem with extensive drainage work in the autumn.

As mentioned, we have continued with our overseeding program on both fairways and tees. This is an ongoing process, and will take a number of years to get a percentage of desirable grass species integrated into our existing sward. This means that we do have a risk of having poor fairways and tees in early spring 2011, depending in what kind of winter/spring we experience here at Losby!

This is my third season now at Losby, and no two have been the same, and I cannot see that changing any time soon, so we always need to keep our feet firmly on the ground and prepare for the worst each year and continue to improve on what we have.

 

We hope you have been enjoying the golf courses this season, and continue to do so right up until we close. Lets keep our fingers crossed for some nice sunny days in September!!

 

Regards

Kevin and the greenkeeping team