HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

We will be topdressing greens on Thursday, October 1st. We are dealing with some very wet and stormy weather right now, so it is imperative that we get the sand down before the next rain. The forecast is for rather heavy rain on Friday. With the moisture in the ground right now, potentially we could be saturated again for the weekend. These fall storms are good times for us to make note of areas that require drainage work or repair.

In the spring we decided to let a few areas on the golf course go Native. We did not mow these areas at all this season (until recently). Leaving these areas unmowed reduces labour and fuel expenses. We did however apply a herbicide to some of these areas in the spring. This is not an extra cost, we would have applied in the mowed bluegrass regardless. We will be looking at interseeding these areas with a blend of fescues in the future. These areas proved to be a compliment to the property, adding contrast and framing of the holes in which they are on. We will be mowing these areas a few times this fall and once in the early spring. The reason for multiple mowings in the fall is to "chop up" the organic matter produced from mowing such tall grass. This practice is a form of weed control for some of the woody species that tend to grow in these areas. A mowing in the spring will wake up the grasses an get them growing early on. This process has started and will take a week or s...

On Friday we finished our topdressing, aerifying and brushing of Approaches. This task went rather smoothly, with minimal disruption to play. This process of topdresing first, then aerifying really works the sand into the profile. The goal of this process is to increase the drainage and firmess of the approaches. This will also help make the approaches tighter and more consistent. In the first picture you will see how the aerifier incorporates the sand into the turf. In the second picture you will notice the sand has not only been worked into the soil but also into the turf canopy. This will help smooth out these areas. Today we are starting to aerify the tees (this will take us a few days to complete). Since we use solid tines at this time of year, all that is left on the tee is a hole and a little bit of tufting of the turf. We will be topdressing the tees after aerification, simply because of time limitations on the weekend.

We completed topdressing greens this morning and were able to brush and water in the sand in before the majority of golf was played. The greens will run a little slow for a bit now. We will be rolling greens tomorrow and then we will resume mowing on Thursday. On Thursday/Friday, we will be topdressing approaches. We will then be solid tining and brushing the approaches to help incorporate the sand. There is very minimal disruption to golf. We will do our best to have the job completed in a timely manner.

Every season, at this time of year we say goodbye to a few of our staff members. Our staff is made up of a diverse group. We have retirees, university students and high school students (with the exception of a few full time seasonal staff members). Therefore, Labour Day marks the end of the summer for our summer staff to return to school. As many of our members will notice, a few tasks start to take longer to complete and some mowing is done in the late mornings and afternoons to compensate for staff shortage. September is usually the hardest month, we still receive summer like weather and the grass is still growing at a quick pace. I assure you that we do our best to provide consistent, high quality playing conditions for our entire season. We do appreciate some common golf etiquette a little more at this time of year. Raking bunkers after play, fixing divots and ball marks need to be done more than ever at this time of year. On another note, fall is a great time to perform a number o...