The Big Thaw

 

Hi All,

 

My last blog before Christmas. I just wanted to keep you informed of what we’ve been up too and what’s happened during the thaw and as we look forward.

 

The big thaw finely came on from Sunday 18^th December and took until Tuesday the 20^th to thaw completely. The down side for us was the 43mm of rain that fell during that period of time on top of frozen ground. On Sunday the course puddled up very quickly and standing water was visible all over the course.

What we were left with following the thaw was greens that felt “like walking on pillows” is how a fellow Course Manager explained it to me when describing their greens. There was no doubt they were very soft and felt like we had carried out an aeration practice to them. This was due to the moisture that was already present in the soil then freezing and expanding in the soil profile, puffing (scientific word J) the surfaces up.

As these thawed, instead of the air being pushed out of the soils until they settled down like normal, the now new bigger pore spaces between the soil particles filled with the heavy rainfall meaning we were left with soft greens.

Foot printing on the 7th green 

We knew just like after aeration works, these would settle down and with the rope drainage assisting by constantly reducing the water table once unfrozen and to prove this, a green that is normally one of driest year round, the 7^th, which is one of only two that haven’t been drained sat as the wettest and took the longest to recover.

The negative with the frost was not only the superficial damage to the surfaces with black marks, that will go yellow in the coming days before returning to green but the root shear, which we have seen no signs of thankfully.  The positive is the mini aeration caused by the expanding frost within the soil, giving us nature’s natural aeration with no damage to the surfaces by machines. Every cloud and all that!

What have the team been up too?  

 

Oak trees on the 12th and 7th still hanging on

Amazingly, even after the cold spell and then 40mph winds some of the leaves are still hanging on to the trees, making the never ending leaf battle continue.

I’ve been looking through my photos of the course since 2015 and all the leaves are down by now. Admittedly these have been getting later and later, especially since I started in the job back in mid 90’s but I think to still see trees with leaves on them going into Christmas is a new one on me and shows that there has been a real shift in the seasons.

 

The team have been battling hard all autumn with the leaves and I think considering the conditions they have done a great job and I thank them for it.

In the last week we have been turning our attention to the ditches again. Not only getting the leaves out of them to keep the water flowing but we’ve now started clearing the sediment out of the bottoms with our mini digger. Something we haven’t been able to do sine our last digger got stolen in 2015. You may have noticed this is being left out on the course, hidden away from view as there is always someone watching the diggers…

Final thoughts

Well this week hasn’t ended how I hoped, with the clubhouse closed due to a water mains issue in the area and the power cuts experienced earlier in the week and the course flooding as Mother Nature throws one last wet spell at us to get us nearer to our yearly average. That’s 761mm of rain to date with more falling as I sit and write this out and another 40 odd mm predicted between now and New Years Eve, meaning we will hit around 800mm less than my prediction of 850mm (but who would have imagined the frost period we just had, it’s a one in ten year chance on average). This gets us closer to last year’s 806mm after a wet summer, dry winter that year and 100mm short of our yearly average. Incredibly at the end of August we were just over 300mm… Not a bad effort from Mother Nature to catch up.

No one wants the run up to and the Christmas period to be wet and the course unplayable, although the daylight is turning the right way we still need to protect the course and member safety. We are just about to go into our lowest growth months of the year. When the course is safe and playable it will be open! As a team we want the course open. Sat here now with the course closed and the clubhouse in darkness it’s got a terrible déjà vu about it but we know it’s only for a couple of days and then hopefully onwards. 

That’s enough from me again as I need to rush off for those last minute things I’ve forgotten for the Christmas dinner.

I would just like to thank the greenkeeping team for all their hard work this year, I would like to thank all the other departments for their help and laughter this year and lastly I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas!

 

See you soon

 

Matt