Lucky, lucky!

What a fantastic spell of weather we are still currently enjoying and looking at the long term forecast this morning shows with just a few showers possibly on Friday a wonderful dry period right up to christmas,my money is certainly not on it being a white christmas!
The course is still playing fantastically ,greens are nice and dry,firm,smooth and fast.
As i mentioned in my last blog we vertidrained the greens,this is a time consuming operation but with a great team effort all greens were completed in 2 days and with double and some triple rolling during the week putting surfaces and smoothness were restored with minimum disruption for the golfers.
The greens were also sprayed with seaweed and iron. Seaweed will enhance root growth,root mass and turf establishment as well as aiding the young seed establishment by boosting early growth whilst also being beneficial to soil microbes therefore improving root health.Seaweed also helps maintain plant clorophyll levels for optimium growth and health. Iron is required by the plant to produce chlorophyll which gives plants their green colour as well as playing an important role in reactions including photosynthesis whilst also hardening  the turf making it less susceptible to disease.
It is certainly very pleasing for the team to be ahead of the game with the major work having been carried out already on the greens for the winter period.

The walkway from the 5th green to the 6th tee is progressing well, we have faced a few challanges including a rail from the old railway track that used to run down to the army camp beyond the 7th tee!! I can assure you that the ground was slighly stoney to say the least!The walkway will be levelled out and turfed and matted.

The picture below of the new walkway from the 2nd green to the 3rd tee shows how effective the matting is to manage wear and it will look better and better the more the grass grows through the matt.

 Many of you may also of spotted some of our new signs on the course giving directions to tees etc,we feel the sleepers are very natural and look much better, and these have been made by us! We have some very good carvers and artists in our team!

 The ecological work has been completed behind the 9th green,the scrub,trees etc were removed and the area stripped to bare sand,this area will be left to regenerate on it's own as agreed by Natural Resources Wales.

Alongside the work going on with many new walkways being turfed and matted ,as you can appreciate its impossible to complete all the walkways in one year, but we are still carrying out a general tidying of existing walkways with the emphasis on clean and tidy presentation being paramount with path edges trimmed and shell paths topped up where shell has been carried with foot traffic etc. Many of the other grass walkways have been vertidrained to relieve the compaction from this years traffic.

Last week also saw the old grass bunker short left of the 2nd green lifted ,re shaped and returfed, this area will now form an extension of the approach and makes the hollow much more playable and offers more links style variation of shots from this area.

 Well, that's all folks for another blog,there will b another one shortly to keep you all up to date, Im looking forward to getting the clubs out there on the links whilst we are still lucky with the weather. Enjoy!

Royal St David's Links Team.