Some stunning views of the courses

 This week we continued with verti-cutting and cutting of greens

 Once the greens were verti-cut and cut we gave them a light top-dressing of sand to help smooth the surfaces and help dilute thatch

 Holes 5 & 6 on the Balcomie course

 We have solid tined, verti-cut, cut, double over seeded and top-dressed the 18th green on the Balcomie course to help improve the grass species in the sward

 3rd green on the Balcomie course

 Greens being sprayed after being cut & rolled

 The Balcomie greens being sprayed with a liquid fert at low rate

 We have made a start to lightly scarifying the Balcomie course fairways to help cut out long ends and lateral growth then cut behind to help disperse the clippings

A burst hydraulic hose on our fairway mower on the 18th of the Balcomie course, luckily this is a very rare thing to happen, this area will be hand spiked, seeded and top-dressed to aid it's recovery

Challenging week with the weather

 This week has just been rain and more rain with over 85mm so far, so when the weather let up we were out trying to catch up with all the cutting and repairing water damage in bunkers and on tee paths etc, on-going is cutting and collecting problem areas of deep roughs

 out catching up with fairways and semi-rough cutting, we are very lucky that we dry up very quickly after heavy rain which allows us to get our large cutting machinery back out

 with still having high growth we have continued to verti-cut, groom and brush at least once a week on greens etc to control lateral growth

 in-between showers we had a company in called Fairways demoing the new Jacobsen truck with top-dresser and 2 greens irons

adverse weather jobs were to catch up on trimming and cleaning all sprinklers over both courses

It's all go on both the courses

 we have been out using the turf iron more in the last couple of weeks with all the growth we have just now to help gain more surface pace

 Both courses looking well

 We have verti-cut the greens again this week to help lift the seed heads and remove thatch

 the amount of clippings from the greens, 2 buggies full

 the greens have had an application of wetting agent and seaweed

 hole 4 on the Balcomie course

 we have carried out some minor work to green 3 on the Balcomie course of solid tining, over seeding, rub in seed then a heavy top-dress to cover the seed, this is to help improve the playing surface and grass sward

 Communication sign on the 3rd tee of the work being carried out to the green

 It's that time of year again that we have been out cutting and collecting problem areas of deep rough to help make the courses more playable and improve these areas

We are starting to see the benefits of the rough management program as they are becoming thinner and cleaner with less rank thick grasses, but this is an ongoing program and we will tackle other areas in time

 The weather has been really great this week and at last some heat

 with the grass growing pretty hard, we have been using our brush before cutting to help stand up the grass and lift lateral growth

 In the afternoons we have been working on our turf nursery, it has been rotovated, stone buried, firmed, lightly raked, seeded then lightly raked again

 We all the growth, we have been out verti-cutting greens on both courses to help control the growth and thatch build up

all bunker edges and faces have been sprayed with a selective herbicide to control weeds

 After the welcomed rain on Saturday and Monday we are getting a lot of grass growth now, so we have been turf ironing behind cutting to help gain surface speed on the greens over both courses and we are now at our full cutting program

 We have repainted and replaced club logo sticker on our shoe cleaner

 Another irrigation leak at tee 5 on the Balcomie course

 When we get a chance we have continued working at the 13th path on the Balcomie course by adding in cross drains etc to save material washing down onto the course in heavy rain

 We have been getting of turf nursery ready for seeding

 This week we held a TGI event on the Craighead course

 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