Spring Update
With the clock change just around the corner it finally feels like we can wave goodbye to the Winter and welcome in Spring.
The investment on paths built in September really has helped minimize the damage caused in high wear areas.
We have had a busy Winter period on the course, hopefully you will have seen some of the improvements we have made.
Streams and Trees
Billingbear has a lot of lovely features around the course and we found them to be hidden away, so we decided to open some of these areas up. These areas mainly consisted of brambles and deadwood after a lot of time spent with the chainsaw and hedge cutters, we are really happy with the results.
The tree canopies on the 1st 2nd 3rd & 9th long course were all low, this makes maintenance more difficult and more importantly harder to find your golf ball and play it out. The results of these areas should really highlighted once the leaves are back on the trees.
Gravel Banding
We managed to get some key areas on the 1st, 3rd & 9th drained with the gravel bander. Over 40 tonnes of gravel was used, this helps to improve surface drainage and has proved very beneficial over the last couple of months with the rainfall that we have had.
Between the months of October 16 and mid March 17 we have had 263.5mm of rain, December being the driest with 13mm and November the wettest with 100mm.
December was a tough month for the greens, the disease pressure was at its highest it has been for a number of years. This meant that even though the greens being sprayed with fungicides they could not match up to the pressure which meant we did have a few scars on the greens.
Fungicides are very expensive costing around £600 to spray the greens just once so we have to really select our spraying windows to get the most out of them.
Thankfully with our feeding program and the recent temperatures rising the greens are recovering well.
Health and Safety Update
We have found lately the amount of near misses we are having with golf balls concerning.
In an attempt to make it a safer environment for the green keeping team, we are now using flashing beacons when operating machines.
If the beacon is flashing please do not play your shot until we have switched it off.
The beacon flashing means that we have either not seen you yet or please just give me a minute to get out of your way.
We hope that with this system in place we can reduce the risk of being hit.
A golf ball can injure someone severely so we kindly ask to think before playing your shot.
Your co-operation will be gratefully received.
Finally . . . . . . . . . .
Please continue to help us out by repairing your pitch marks and replacing your divots, this goes along way helping to maintain the condition of the course.
I hope you find this informative.
Thanks for reading.
Tom
