HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

In between the rain events this month we have been plugging away at our long list of cultural practices. In mid-September we took advantage of a nice sunny day and ran our Sisis Verticutting unit on our tees. Verticutting is also known as dethatching. For compaction relief and thatch reduction, we have gone to solid tining tees in conjunction with deep verticutting on tees as opposed to the traditional hollow tine aeration. in the first picture you can see the amount of material that the Sisis brings up. We follow up with a blowing and finally a healthy topdressing of straight sand to fill the lines. In the third picture you can see the finished product. This process not only reduces thatch, but also provides a firmer and more level teeing surface.

Since labour day the weather has been a virtual roller coaster, we have had lots of rain, some sunshine, warm temperatures and a variety of all three in one day. Throughout this weather our staff has been hard at work trying to restore our bunkers to the original shape and size. Over the years turfgrass begins to encroach into the bunkers, especially on the back or low sides. We have been using the pitchfork method to work our way back from the inside edge. The pitchfork is inserted repeatedly moving back from the edge until the original soil edge is found. The edge is then torn back to this soil/sand interface. Then the existing edge is tamped down to force the grass edge down to the sand, therefore reducing the soil lip on the back sides of the bunkers. This creates a more traditional, Stanley Thompson look to the bunker surrounds. As you will notice from the first picture, the red stakes are in place prior to the edging. In the second picture you can see the amount of over gro...

Labour Day marks a few things for us at the Grounds Dept. First and foremost it is our Club Championship weekend. A lot of work goes on throughout the club to ensure a great weekend is had by all. Secondly, we begin to lose a few of our summer staff members, our students are a valuable portion of our staff and we will miss them. Third, the end of summer is upon us, this summer has been very stressful for both turf grass and staff...the heat and humidity has taken it's toll on both. September is a welcomed month with the shorter days and the cooler temperatures. Last but not least, now that we are on our way out of the most stressful time for turf grass, we will be ramping up our cultural practices again. Next week we will be lightly topdressing greens, we will then be venting all of our greens as well. This is a very non disruptive process as the holes that we punch are very, very small. There is no recovery time with this process, the greens will be back to normal (actually better...