Monday 14th November 2016.

A decision was made recently to trial the use of a contractor to complete some of the course renovations for this summer.
The contractor came to the club and completed all the required coring of our fairways in 2 days allowing our staff to concentrate solely on the clean up process.
Generally this coring practice would be completed by our own staff and our own equipment but would take some 3 weeks to finish.
This was an extremely successful exercise and helped up complete all coring and verti-cutting of fairways in 6 working days.
The success of this programme suggests to us that it could be the way to approach fairway renovation in the future seasons.

Contractor coring the 9th hole. Five tractor and corer units were used, completing an average sized hole in approx. 45 minutes.

A borrowed core processing unit from Sun City CC was then used to destroy cores and return nutrient material back into the soil profile. Fairways were then drag meshed to work sand into turf, loose organic material blown off and watered for 2 nights before being mown. 

Friday 4th November.

Groundstaff have been working feverishly this week to complete all the verti-mowing of our fairways.
This has worked and been completed really well in 4 days with the use of our verti-mower units that fit onto our fairway mowing unit, our Rake-o-vac unit and blower unit.
Significant amounts of grass have been removed from the fairways and we will see a great result from this procedure in about a month.
Thanks again to my staff for their hard work this week.
Next week 9 holes will be closed on Monday and Tuesday so contractors can complete the coring of the fairways. This will allow good movement of fertiliser and irrigation water into the rootzone and provide much-needed oxygen to the rootzone also.
We have borrowed a Core Processing unit from Sun City CC to clean up the cores behind the contractors with this exercise expected to take just the 2 days.
In the weeks that follow our renovation period we will apply both wetting agent and fertiliser to achieve sound recovery through the coming weeks.

Verti mowing with verti-mower units on our fairway mower.

Large amount of grass pulled out of fairway after verti-mowing.

Pick up of grass material with our Rake-o-vac unit.

The finished result after mowing, blowing and more mowing.