Four seasons in one day!

What a mixed bag of weather were having at the moment, today we encountered strong winds, heavy rain,glorious sunshine and a minute later hailstones!
The wet weather has certainly returned with 75 mm of rain falling in less than a week and on a site where the water table is high at the best of times this has caused a bit of water to remain in a few of the bunkers but the rest of the course is draining well, but we cannot beat mother nature and im sure that the extensive drainage system the Roger and his team have installed that these will cope with the majority of what falls on the playing areas.
The wet and mild weather has been of great assistance in helping all the greens that were overseeded with fescue last week in germinating,hopefully we will see the germination towards the end of the week.The seed will then be helped with a organic seaweed (high salt index fertilizers and iron are detremental to seed) to help germination also.Interstingly for you to know I asked Johnsons who supply the fescue seed to add a Myccorhizea coating to the seed which does this-

:Mycorrhizal fungi are a remarkable group of organisms that have been benefiting plants for at least 500 million years.

At the dawn of time when plants were just beginning to colonise our planet mycorrhizal fungi were there living in a symbiotic relationship with plants enabling them to extract nutrients and hold onto water in very difficult soil conditions.

In effect, the fungus provides a secondary root system, a system that is considerably more efficient and extensive than the plants own root system.

These fungi are living organisms and will live with the plant, sourcing a continued nutrient supply for its entire lifetime – a truly sustainable plant nutrition solution. In exchange the plant provides carbon and sugars to the fungi. Not unsurprisingly, 90% of all land plants employ this relationship to enhance their own root system’s capacity to deliver nutrients.

A very interesting fact and im sure that we will see the added benefits of the Myccorhizal coating,science and nature working together!Marvellous!

The overseeding was carried out with a 13mm solid tine going down to a depth of 9mm then the braodcasted seed was brushed into the holes, the holes in the picture below are packed with fescues!As you can see in the following picture we topresessed to fill in the remainder of the holes and to provide a growing medium for the seed to germinate in and to level off the surfaces.
The greens are currently looking very healthy with both the bents and fescues looking very happy,the fescues have certainly perked up a little in the last week or so and we will b looking to give them some seaweed and  iron going into the winter.



As you can see here in this picture we have also started the major winter work programme on the changes to the 17th hole,this will take a while.We have made a temporary green just short of the cross bunker for play during the week so that we can carry on with work so that disruption to play will be minimal and of course the safety of the staff whilst working on the reconstruction.It's still a tough hole ! We will because of the recent favourable weather to overseed be putting the vertidraining of the greens on hold for the time being as not to disturb the seed,after all it is an investment in the greens.We will however be commencing vertidraining of approaches and pencil tining of the tees this week.Get that air in there for a nice healthy plant.

There is plenty of other work going on on the links with blocking/turfing ongoing on heavy wear areas, rabbit holes etc and divoting etc which all makes such a difference to the links presentation.

Agian, many thanks to all the staff for all their hard work.

Happy golfing,

Royal St David's Links team.

Big week ahead!

Hi all,Well its a bit of a change since the last post of unusually warm weather with the temperature dipping and cold northerly winds upon us,however the winds are switching back to the south giving us a slightly warmer front for a bit.Lets hope the long range forecast of one of the harshest winters in decades from November onwards is wrong!

The links team are cerainly hoping for a warm spell to stay so that after the Welsh Professional Championship should enable us to overseed whilst we still have warm soil temperatures for good germination of our fine fescues.The warm soils will also aid the turfing which already a lot has been carried out all over the links of repairing and turfing rabbit holes and heavily worn traffic areas to root strongly and be strong going into the winter.

• Visit of Alistair Beggs STRI consultant agronomist.

Last week saw the visit of Alistair Beggs from STRI to give his expert view over the links.Alistair is the head of Agronomy at STRI and is a world renowned agronomist and also looks after all The Open Championship venues.

• He once again was impressed with the putting surfaces especially, and congratulated Roger ,John and the team in what was Roger's final meeting with Alistair before retiring in what they have achieved in the last 35 years in converting 95% meadow grass greens to 95% fescue bent greens,an astonishing achievement, which no doubt caused a lot of sleepless nights for them but resluting in sustainable fine grass greens that the club can be exeptionally proud of,some of the very best in the country!



• The returfing work that has been carried out extensively on the links,please look after these areas!If you need to move the traffic management measures during play then please replace and keep trolleys off these areas then these areas will be strong and ready for next seasons play and looking great.
  

•  The walk off area from the 2nd green to 3rd tee is progressing well with the before and after pictures here showing the progress we have made to be almost ready for the area to be turfed.The addition of the path to the back tee and widening of the walkway to tee and fairway will result in less damage and better condition of the winter tee and a general tidying of the area using natural linksy materials to give a classic linksy feel.





As i mentioned before the Welsh Professional championship is being held this week on the classic links and we are currently prepping and fine tuning the playing surfaces,let's hope the weather plays ball for the players.There are many top players competing including the likes of Europen Tour player Garry Houston,Ryder Cup hero in 2002 Phillip Price,who can forget his incredible singles victory over Phil Mickelson to capture the Ryder Cup for team Europe and many more.

Forthcoming course maintenance.

After the Welsh Professional Champiuonship,the Winter work programme will commence with the main work that has been delayed for the tournament resuming,this will consist mainly of

• Vertidraining of greens /approaches etc
• Changes to the 17th hole
• Overseeding of greens/approaches
• Topdressing
• Iron/Seaweed on playing surfaces
• Continuation of patching/returfing
• Returfing/matting of walkways.
• Scrub/tree management

Hope to see you on the links soon,P.s Please remember to repair your pitchmarks,replace your divots and take care with the newly laid turf and look after our fantastic links,

Regards

Royal St David Links Team.

Two sides of the coin

The recent warm weather has had both plus and minus points to it, it unfortunately produces huge disease pressure with such a warm and wet environment with heavy dew's for the disease to thrive in and this is a countrywide problem at the moment and even Royal St David's normally dry environment with good aeration practices isn't enough to keep the disease at bay.It has hit the bent grasses quite hard and preventative measures were taken but there is a little disease fusarium scarring on a few small areas at the moment however on the plus side the warm weather has allowed us to get in immediately and overseed and then topdress for maximum seed and soil contact for excellent germination,the areas where we have lost a little grass cover should make a full recovery and go strong into the winter period.This mild weather has also enabled us to overseed more fairways nd walkways which have had a lot of wear during the year and should recover with good coverage of fescue grasses.

The seeded areas packed with fescue seed and then topdressed for maximum chance for succesful germination, this will be followed up in around 10 days with an organic seaweed feed to further aid germination. 



The walkways and fairways which have also been overseeded with the disc seeder.

The course is in excellent condition and after final preperations on Friday for Presidents weekend the hard work of the greenkeeping team should be applauded.

Happy golfing!:)

Regards

Royal St Davids Links Team.

Course update.

Its that time of year again when the planned winter work schedule compiled by the club and with NRW (Natural resources Wales) consent is upon us,we are currently having to delay the major work such as the slight alterantions to the 17th and vertidraining etc by a couple of weeks as Royal St Davids are proud hosts to the Welsh Professional Championship which im sure there will be some fine golf played over the great links.

However we have been able to start some of the winter work.There has been a section of gorse/bramble removed alongside the exit from 2nd green to the 3rd tee.This will therefore enable us to double the size of the grass pathway which will be installed and manage the wear and traffic more effectively.



Some aeration has also been carried out on the greens,this has been in the form of a solid 8mm pencil tine to a depth of around 4".As we all know,aeration is one of the most important operations on the golf course as the roots of the finer fescue/bent grasses will exploit these air spaces encouraging deeper rooting resulting in healthy turf.Aeration also enables efficient drainage to keep the greens as dry and firm as possible which again favours the fescue and bent grasses.

 The TORO Procore machine used for aeration operations,this machine is exeptionally efficient and produces minimum disturbance for the golfer,you can hardly tell the greens have been aerated,brilliant!

Unfortunately the chafer grubs are back again,the badgers are ripping up some turf in search of these grubs,with the areas having been treated with insecticide there is very little we can do apart from tidying up the areas and reseeding the areas.

There has also been lots going on in keeping up the high presentation standard of the golf  course with some

• Sprinkler head trimming

• Patching of rabbit holes and heavily worn traffic areas with good quality soil and a good depth of quality turf all from our in house turf nursery making this a sustainable operation.

Strimming/flymo around tees /markers.

Regards,
Royal St Davids Links Team.