Ian Lumsden has kindly donated 10 m3 of rocks for the construction of a rock garden on the RHS of the 4th fairway. Ian had to source these rocks from elsewhere and deliver them to the Golf Club. Tremendous effort Lumpy.
The rocks are in place (photo). What we need now are plants to make it look really good. As this is a rockery over a drain, and not a creek bank, very little lomandra will be planted, if any they will be at the join with the creek banks – we want plants that are relatively drought tolerant such as – succulents, ornamental grasses, near mature agapanthus etc. If you can help, please contact Todd, Greens Director, Dave Lyons or leave message on volunteer notice board.
Joint working bee with Noosa Landcare 4th March
We would like between 10 to 20 volunteers on Monday 4th March for about 3 hours from 7.30 am to meet
at the Shed. Representatives of two local newspapers will be there. We will work with Noosa Landcare people to plant on creek banks. Photos show potential erosion before rainfall and what occurred after 95mm last Tuesday night. The one on the left shows creek on 15th before rain. The small tree on left is now in the creek. Other photo shows erosion of creek on 3rd.
Since the recent heavy rain we found damage below the dam wall LHS 9th. Soil under concrete has been eroding away for some time (photo). Our resident engineering guru Tony Bernhagen has inspected and strongly recommended the dumping of rocks to reinforce the dam wall, as soon as possible. He also advised not to fill in and concrete again, but leave the culvert open. Thanks Tony.
Walking Bridge on 17th
For safety reasons this walking bridge has been roped off pending repair/inspection. Electricity and water lines are attached to the structure of the bridge. Rex Williams will do some running repairs but we need to call in a retired builder or two to advise the Greens Committee regarding the future of this bridge.
We are winning the war on our golf course.
The JOHN DEERE surrounds mower, TORO boom spray combination is clearly resulting in more desirable grass on our green surrounds. Close mowing and the ability to apply readily available nutrients (fertiliser from boom spray), without the need to water the fertiliser in, is assisting green couch at the expense of carpet grass and weeds. So much so, that we can now spot spray out carpet grass, as is being done.
Similarly, but not as noticeable yet, we are slowly winning out on our fairways. Our powerful TORO fairway mower and the close mowing it provides, is getting on top of weeds, and fertiliser from the boom spray is producing increasing percentages of green couch there as well. The future looks good.
Lifetime of golf greens and bunkers
According to the US Society of Golf Course Architects, the lifetime of golf greens is 15-30 years depending on how well they were constructed, while the lifetime of bunker sand and drainage is 5-10 years.
We saw some of our bunkers last Wednesday (13th Feb) half full of water. Obviously drainage will need to be addressed when finances improve and committee sees this as a priority. Todd and Paul showed a possible reason on the 17th RHS bunker, viz plastic surrounding drainage lines. We will need to investigate the extent of this.
It is topical now to raise lifetime of greens as Cooroy Golf Club has been successful in getting a grant of $80K to redo a couple of greens. The application was initially based on the need to address couch intrusion. The 10th and 12th have been suggested as the first to do, as they have significant couch intrusion and drainage issues (these will require full reconstruction). A sub-committee (Wayne, Cyril, Todd and the Greens Director) will meet to come up with recommendations for Committee, once the terms of reference of the grant have been sorted out.
Couch intrusion can come from stolons growing horizontally from the edges or from rhizomes that are able to travel below the surface, often well below the surface. Because of rhizomes, it is not a matter of just laying new Tiff 328. The entire rootzone needs to be replaced, i.e. that above the drainage materials. If drainage is OK then this process is usually called renovation of a green. Another reason to dig up a green is if the build up of organic matter gets to the stage that it wins out no matter how much coring and scarifying are done.
See demonstration below which shows profiles of soil in greens from Florida, which has a similar climate to sub-tropical Queensland, and has significant year round grass growth.
Organic matter accumulates at an accelerated pace on Florida putting greens, and this can negatively impact drainage and turfgrass rooting. To show how rootzones change with time, from left to right are soil profiles removed from the same putting green (renovated in 2001) in 2001, 2003, 2008, and 2012, respectively.
