Geese, Brushing, Five Garden and 8 Drain

If you have had a chance to play between last week and this week you will have notice a significant colour difference in the green and surrounding turf.  The fertilizer applied on the greens, which is temperature and moisture sensitive, is beginning to release nutrients.  The consistently warmer temperatures, both day and night, are encouraging the plants to use the nutrients and we're seeing active daily growth.  The growth is good timing, as we begin our greens aeration on Monday afternoon, and it will help with the recovery process.

Thursday and Friday of this week we brushed the green prior to cutting.  Much like verticutting the brush stands the longer strands and loose blades for the mower to take off.  While not doing much for speed, the brushing does goes a long way to create a more consistent playing surface through out the course.

Mr Yorke towing the brush or "Greens Groomer".  When on the green the operator must be very careful not to turn to quickly or sharply as the tires cart tires can damage the turf.

The brush travels in a circular pattern, like a zamboni, on both green and the collar.

This close up shows the grass standing up.  A few minutes later Kyle will be buy to mow the greens. 

 This process is simple and fast, and works to remove the laid over grass.  We can tell the effectiveness by how much grass the mower behind collects.  On a normal mowing day we might empty the grass buckets once every two greens, today they had to emptied after each greens.

The geese (sigh) have returned to the golf course again although their numbers do seem less this year as compared to last year.   I took this picture on Tuesday.

You can't see them for the long grass but with there are some goslings with parents.  The fence is effective in this particular instance, so it will remain a practice until the birds begin to fly.

The garden on five is now complete.  Stuart has added some perennials that were salvaged from last year, the old part has been seeded and has started growing.

The finished product.

The rain we experienced on Wednesday night and into Thursday morning helps to illustrate the reason why the larger part of the garden was removed.   Most of the area around four green drains into this low spot make the area unsuitable for most plants. 

We continue to work on number seven / eight drain.

If you recall from last week the drain running from 8 inch drain running from 17 tee to 6 pond is clogged with tree roots.  On Monday of this week Kyle and I fed an inch and half irrigation hose into the hole in the pipe that you see in the picture above. We were able to get about 60 feet of hose into the pipe before we hit a blockage.

The picture above (from eight looking to seven) shows how far the irrigation hose traveled before the blockage.  The hole in the foreground is the same hole as the picture above this one.
On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we reversed the nines to allow us more time to work without bothering the golfers, and began exposing the pipe with the backhoe.

Once exposed we remove an eight foot section of the pipe. Obviously the drain is not working from this point to the pond on six.  Disappointingly, there was only a small mass of roots in the pipe, possibly washed down from the earlier excavation, but now that we have space to work in, we were able to drive a 2 and a half inch pipe (which we had in stock) into the larger 8 inch pipe in attempts to clear the roots farther up the line. 

Kyle gluing the 2 and a half pipe together.  Our first attempt was towards 8 fairway from seven.  With the open hole on the other side of the cart path we were able to gauge the effectiveness.

During our first attempt the 2.5 inch pipe went about 90 feet towards eight fairway before hitting a mass of roots. We hauled the pipe out and cut some teeth into the end, forming an auger of sorts, and then tried again.  Eventually, after an number of tries the roots dislodged and below is what came out of the pipe.

Next we swung the pipe around and tried to clear the blockage headed toward six pond.
 

Here's a video of the pipe in action.  The root mass was so thick that it took three of us to drive the pipe through.  Once we hit the blockage we would twist the pipe and chew through the roots.  Unfortunately, we could not break the mass away from the 8 inch pipe as we had going the other direction (towards 8).   The roots are very similar to peat moss, when the pipe auger was removed the root would just fill the gap left behind and nothing would drain.

After several tries to dislodge the root mass, it became obvious that we weren't going to clear the roots in that fashion.   We would have dig up another section of pipe cut it out. We withdrew the 2.5 inch pipe and measured where the blockage was and marked for digging the on Thursday.  Then it rain 35 mm on Wednesday night.  On Thursday the entire area was flooded and because the 8 inch pipe was completely block nothing was draining.  To speed up the draining we re-inserted the 2.5 inch pipe into the 8 inch pipe and through the root mass,leaving it in the hole to act as a conduit to (albeit a much smaller one) to drain the area.  This morning it was still too wet to work in the area, and the project will be put off until Wednesday of next week after the aerification. Please mind the holes on 7 and 8, they are flagged off for visibility.