It is the middle of the growing season and in spite of a mini-drought, there is still a lot of grass growth on the course, particularly the more undesirable “grasses”. Public holidays, staff holidays and expenditure restrictions in place, have affected our getting out there mowing the rough as much as hoped.

However, we did get good feedback from our club captains about the presentation of the course (particularly fairway definition) during the Saturday holiday competitions, which were played “off the deck”. Two green staff are taking leave in late January and early February – one for two weeks and another for one week.

TASKS COMPLETED OR IN PROGRESS

• Repairs have been made to greens (4th, 5th and 16th). Grass has been removed as pictured above on the 4th, then river sand compacted before rolling out Tiffdwarf grass from our greens nursery.  The new grass is matting in well with existing.  It is hoped we will be able to purchase some rolls of green couch to repair bare patches in front of the green.
• Greens have been recently cored with 8mm solid tynes to relieve compaction and reduce algal problems.  Todd and his team are confident this regular program will help keep algae under control.
• We have 80% coverage of stolons of green couch on our nursery RHS 4th and 18th in front of ladies tee.  The process used is the way forward to introduce better grass on our fairways.  We will again be taking trailers of volunteers to Twin Waters Golf Club (thanks to our contacts there) to get stolons for more coverage on the 18th and to cover 3 mounds to go in RHS of the first fairway (to cover three bare batches).  On 5th February, we are hoping to move soil from near the greens nursery to the 1st using in house equipment before getting Dave Thomas to shape the mounds for us.  Kennards Hire Noosa are supplying a truck at no cost (thank you Michael Loe).

PROJECT WITH NOOSA & DISTRICT LANDCARE

On the 22nd and 29th of January Noosa Landcare and their trainees planted approximately 1300 Lomandra Hystrix which is a native to this area (occurs in rain forests).  It is very commonly used for erosion control of creek banks as it is deep rooting and tolerates poor soil fertility – well suited to Cooroy Golf Club.  It will only be planted on our creek banks and when established our Greens staff will not have to continually apply herbicide etc.  It is considered the more attractive of the two locally available native Lomandra species.

The other L Longifolia is on our golf course as it is too at Pelican Waters, in a bigger way.  However, they have the green staff to prune back foliage every couple of years.  We have left Lomandra plants to grow to such an extent that they can be considered an eyesore e.g. in the vicinity 6th and 13th tees and LHS of 17th in the hazard before the grass bunker.  Consideration will be given to taking these out when we resume volunteer working bees soon under the ongoing Job – Raising the Tree Canopy (2019) J15.

On Monday, 4th MARCH, Landcare people, school students and volunteers from Cooroy Golf Club will finish the planting of approximately 700 plants.  Representatives of the media will be in attendance.

The photo above shows Landcare people using a tool that both digs and waters soil before planting each L Hystrix.  NOTE Cooroy Golf Club have requested a wider plant spacing than is normally the case.