HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

The wet weather has hindered most of our late fall tree work plans, but we hope to get out on the course (on some frozen ground) in the new year. Currently we are renovating our parts room in our equipment manager's shop area. As our maintenance facility ages, the need for updating is increasing. We will be repairing and painting the walls, painting the floor and installing all new shelving to provide a safe and efficient parts storage room. Once completed, we will commence the painting portion of our winter. All of the course accesories and furniture will be sanded and stained or painted to give it a fresh look for the 2012 season. We will also be building new divot boxes for the par 3 tees. We have also been compiling all of our required material for our annual desk review through the IPM council of Ontario. This is a legal requirement for us in the golf sector that allows us to continue using plant protectants on the golf course. Happy holidays!!!

The end of the 2011 golf season has come...our staff has been working away at preparing the golf course for the long winter months. We are currently deep slicing the fairways and will then move into the rough. The weather has cooperated nicely for our winter protection/snow mould preventative fungicide application. Greens, Tees and Fairways were all sprayed this week. It is important for us to complete this in perfect conditions, as we require the product to dry completely into the plant for long term efficacy. We also have begun our dormant/late fall fertilizer applications to Greens, Tees and Rough. This application will aid in carbohydrate storage for winter, also helping with spring green up. We have one more Vertidrain aeration to perform on our Greens next week. More holes = More drainage. The crew has been continuing to work away at bunker edging. Using a pitchfork, we have been ripping back the overgrown, sandy edges (mostly on the backs).The edges are then tamped down by hand ...

We the recent weather trend (almost 2 weeks without rain!) our department has been very busy and productive. We were able to complete our Vertidrain/Deeptine aeration and topdressing on Greens, Tees and Approaches. Again, this process creates deep channels for air, water and sand to reach into the rootzone. We will be Vertidraining the Greens again prior to closing in attempt to create more drainage channels for water build up throughout the winter. We will not be topdressing this time, as the covers will be installed in the coming weeks. The drier weather has allowed us to complete a final mowing in the rough as it has been a couple of weeks since we were last able to get the mowers out. Leaf blowing and mulching has been running at full tilt and the golf course is looking cleaner every day. With all of the rain soaked weather that we have experienced, we have noticed a few drainage issues. Clogged tiles have been found in a few instances. This is common in a year like this one with a...

It seems that weather has been the topic of choice throughout the 2011 golf season. It certainly has been a season of extremes. Currently we are preparing for yet another onslaught of rain. Even a brief shower brings water to the surface, puddling on fairways, tees and some greens is evidence of the saturation point. Environment Canada is forecasting up to 50mm of rain between Tuesday night and Thursday afternoon. What does this mean to the golf course? What this means is that we will be under water! Current conditions are making it difficult for even daily maintenance to be completed. Today we are mowing everything that we possibly can. Growth has yet to slow down as we have not had cold temperatures or even a frost yet. Cart traffic has been severely limited in the past few weeks due to the saturation of the soil. We understand that this causes issues for players requiring carts, but the golf course simply cannot handle the cart traffic in these conditions. The wet conditions are a r...

I just wanted to make note of a couple of dates this month that we will doing some cultural practices on our greens... Tuesday, October 11th- Topdressing Monday, October 24th- Heavy topdressing and Deeptine aeration *During the Deeptine operation the greens will be closed and the pins will be put into the approaches, once the green is finished, it will be reopened. *As the weather allows us, we will doing some cultural practices(topdressing,verticutting, etc) to our tees and approaches and fairways.

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...