7th July 2020
That’s us back into our first week of competitions and typically the weather has turned a bit sour of late, as it usually does after an early summer. Rainfall recorded in may was 21mm followed by 102mm in June, which was very welcome for the course in general after the very dry and warm April.
The greens are coming on now and seem to be performing better after all the heavy rain. We also top dressed on six occasions through early spring/summer in order to help fill in the Leatherjacket damage and are pretty much hole free at the minute. The Meadow grass seed heads are abating and our cutting height has remained a little higher at 4mm which in turn reduces any unnecessary stress. 
Our cutting units are razor sharp after a re grind recently and this improves ball roll through the grass leaf not getting torn when cut. Also a clean cut is healthier for the grass as less infection and disease take hold.
Fairy rings
Some fairy ring activity (basidiomycetes fungi) has flared up on certain greens particularly the 4th and 7th for some reason. I can’t explain why some greens get this and not others as all the greens are treated in the same way. Historically I remember treating rings on the 7th green back in the early 90s’ as it was the worst green back then too! There used to be a chemical, long withdrawn (oxycarboxin) and like everything else that was effective they took it away?? but this got rid of them pretty quickly. These rings always look worse when the turf is lean because there is no colour to disguise them but they are superficial and don’t really hinder the ball roll. We have one more Revolution wetting agent to go on shortly which will help condition the soil and I may have to fire up the old compost tea maker soon to add some beneficial microbes and fight the fairy ring fungi.
Roughs
During lockdown we were a little limited in how much rough we could cut and concentrated on keeping the semis in check. We managed to get an intermediate cut done and have kept on top of this recently. The tall natural roughs are quite long and got no early golfer trampling with the closure and are certainly a challenge now if you go in them. We’ll need some dry weather again to cut and collect a bit more of the tall roughs here and there.
George Paterson