It's that time of year for cleaning up leaves, we are really lucky we only have a few areas to clean up

 It's the start of the courses winter mid week closures starting with the Craighead course. So it is a great chance to catch up on aeration work, all greens, surrounds and fairways were slit tined

 Fairways were done in 2 different directions

 after the the slit tining we gave the greens, surrounds and tees a good top-dressing then rubbed in to help dilute thatch and produce a firm, dry and smooth putting surface

 The tees were deep verti-drained to help surface drainage

 Bunker short of the 4th green has been rebuilt

 to help drainage we have put in a soakaway in the low part of the bunker

 On the Balcomie course, the construction company has started work on building the new toilets next to tees 11

we have seeded and top-dressed our drainage lines in front of tees 9 & 18 to help smooth this area off, this will be ongoing and we will apply a fertiliser in the spring to aid recovery

 Before our winter work starts next week, we have taken the chance to catch up with a drainage job at the roadside to drain the road into an existing drain and level the old ditches to make the roadside better to maintain

 We have made sides for our utility vehicle for when we are transporting gorse etc to hold more

 with the drop in temperature we have reduce all cutting and in between cuts we will turf iron instead to help keep a smooth surface

 It's that time of year when we have slight problems with casting worms, so we have sprayed a worm irritant on the Balcomie course greens to help keep the surfaces cleaner

 We have put out a new sign at the 4th bottom medal tee to give the information of the carry over the beach, start of the fairway and to the bunker

 Today we have been out hollow coring certain tees & aprons on the Craighead course to help reduce thatch levels

 On Wednesday I attended a seminar and course walk at Stirling GC on the re-design of bunkers and certain areas of the course

 The guys busy getting the greens cut & turf ironed to help smooth the surface after the aeration work, bunkers being raked and fairways/tees divoted

 More deep hollow coring on the Putting green to help replace the heavy soil with sand to improve the drainage etc

 After the roughs have been cut, we are raking into the sward 2 ways to help reduce the thickness of the roughs

 The bench at the walkway up to the Clubhouse from the Balcomie course has been replaced and the surrounding areas tidied up

Just 2 weeks since the aeration work to the greens and they are recovering well

 We are now back onto our rough management program of cutting, collecting and raking the roughs on the Craighead course this week and hopefully the Balcomie course the following week, weather pending as it really needs to be dry to get a clean finish

 With all the aeration work completed to both sets of greens it was just the Autumn/winter fertiliser to be applied this week to aid recover and harden the plant up to the colder temperatures

We are cutting back/down certain trees at our 17th medal tee on the Balcomie course to allow more air and light movement, which should improve the turf vigour