S pecial F eature – G O L F CO U R S E M A I N T E N A N C E
WINTER By: Sue de Zwart
T
WORK
he mercury is dropping and the growing season is coming to an end. This is the ideal time to undertake winter maintenance on your golf course, as the work that you complete during this period will have a lot to do with you enjoying a trouble-free spring and summer ahead. I don’t believe in fighting fires. Preventative maintenance & planning are key. There are always unforeseen issues which crop up, but these are the exception.
IRRIGATION Irrigation is always my starting point. This is, after all, the heart of the golf course, and it is easy to neglect this department when the system is working well. The quality of your turf is depends on the efficiency of your irrigation, and it is much better to take stock of your system in winter rather than during long periods of hot dry weather, when a shutdown could be disastrous. Use this irrigation maintenance checklist as a guide: • Systematically clean and service every sprinkler. • Replace nozzles every five to six years, or as close to this as your budget allows. • Check irrigation patterns in the dew to ensure no uneven coverage. • Print station detail sheets off the central control & make sure that the information in the field correlates with the pc. • Take satellite box casings apart, clean them and do the necessary maintenance. • Clean the pump house. • Service the pumps & filter bank
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BUNKER MAINTENANCE This is a great opportunity to check that your bunker sand depths are uniform throughout. Aim to achieve the perfect balance between playability and shot value – we do not want the bunkers to be too soft or too firm. Wetting agents may be used when the sand is too soft. If your bunkers are too hard, then either turn them over by hand, or use St Francis Links superintendent Charl Blaauw’s invention, the Fluffy. It’s a handy tool. BUNKER EDGING: For those who haven’t installed one of the fantastic liners on the market, second prize would be to install a rigid plastic lining 100 mm deep (clear if possible) pushed in around the bunker’s edge: it isn’t visible, does not affect play, but does allow one to use an irrigation flag to find the exact line and edge back to it consistently every three months. Install a misting system on your bunker faces or Netafim drip irrigation on your bunker edge. If budget allows. It is a wonderful tool,
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May | June 2019
