With the very dry weather continuing, the irrigation system has been on most nights to water greens, surrounds and tees and hand watering through the day of any other areas and high spots, so we have been trying to keep up with repairs to the older Balcomie course system

 replacing ball valves for our hose points that were leaking

 mains pipe to the 4th green

 Replaced all pipework/valves etc in the box at green 10

 mobile sprinklers out on fairways 2 & 12

 We have replaced the 1st tee bin and Pro shop bin with larger sized bins to cope with the litter on very busy days

 The Craighead greens are recovering well and will be back to normal in a couple of days now, we have applied another light sand dressing to help in the recovery

 We have started to spray our fairways and semi-roughs with a selective herbicide to control the daises

 We hired a spray contractor to help us with all the larger fairways/semi-roughs and driving range

we have nearly completed edging/weeding and topping up our tee paths, just the 15th tee path and 13th maintenance path on the Balcomie course to complete

Aeration week

 From Wednesday we have closed the Craighead course for 3 days to complete essential aeration work to the greens

 We started off by deep tining to 250mm with a solid 12mm tine to aid drainage/air movement and break up compaction

 Then we mini-hollow cored with a 11mm tine to a depth of 25mm to take out any unwanted thatch plus this is an ideal seed pot for before over seeding

 Then we cleaned up all the cores

  Verti-cutting to help clean up more mess and smooth off the surfaces

 Then overseed with traditional fescue/bent mix

 All greens and surrounds were top-dressed to cover the seed and fill in the aeration holes, we applied a ton of sand per green, then left to dry before rubbing in and vibrate rolled

 Irrigation has been applied to wash in the sand and keep the new seed damp to help with germination

 With the temperatures slowly rising, we have started to spray selective herbicide to help control daises over both courses

 With the Craighead course closed for the aeration, it made sense to organise our local contractor to come in and re-grade the road to the shed and fill in any potholes etc as the road goes through the course

Battle Trophy

 At the weekend we held the Battle trophy over the Craighead course

 Some great scoring for rounds 1 & 2 but on the Sunday for rounds 3 & 4 the wind got up and made both rounds challenging

 This week we have been catching up with jobs on the Balcomie course as last week most of the man power was used for setting up for the Battle

 We have been out spraying a herbicide to help control the rougher grasses in our problem areas of roughs over both courses, this is part of our rough management plan with cutting and collecting these areas to help thin out the roughs to make them more playable and cleaner

 We have applied a fertiliser to fairways 2,3 & any new drainage work areas to promote recovery and improve our 2 weaker fairways on the Craighead course

In the afternoons once the morning jobs have been completed on the courses,we have been screening sand for topping up bunkers

 This week we have been setting the Craighead course up for the Battle trophy this weekend

 Greens being hand cut at 5mm

 Craighead course 1st tee

 with the continued dry spell we have been out hand watering high spots etc

to gain slightly more pace on the putting surfaces we have been turf ironing behind cutting when required

 With the dry conditions continuing we have been applying water to greens and tees to help keep the grasses ticking over plus helps to water in the fertilisers that were applied

 Any new turf has been hand watered to stop the turf drying out. not far away from full cutting programs

 Courses starting to get more definition from the cutting

 We have been using the brush before cutting to help lift any long ends and get a better cut on greens, surrounds and tees

Any weeds in the greens have been hand picked to reduce chemical usage on these areas, fairways will be sprayed  with a selective herbicide to control daises once the temperature raises slightly

 Spring fertiliser (5.0.0 +2fe) has been applied to the greens and then watered in

 Repairing a couple of bursts on the irrigation system on the Balcomie course

 Starters hut getting it's annual paint

 We have added more new fencing around the new path at the toilets on the Balcomie course

 10th medal tee on the Balcomie course

 6th tee being cut on the Balcomie course with the 5th hole in the back ground

 we a have started our monthly application of wetting agent and seaweed to the greens which allows water to penetrate and hold into the soil profile

Last week seen our old JD tractor of 14 years being replaced with a new Kubota tractor, hopefully this tractor services us well