At 2 pm on Sunday 19th of March, the course closed for two and a half days to allow work to be carried out for maintenance week. We are fortunate to have 2 maintenance closures in the year with the other taking place in September.
As we continue the journey of reducing our Organic Matter (OM) content in the greens, we enlisted the services of Ken Siems and his son Jacob with their Dry-Ject machines. Dry-Ject is a sand-injection machine which blasts a channel into the green using a jet of high-pressure water and fills up the channels with sand (more info can be found here - https://kensiems.com/dryject/). We estimated that we injected approx. 45 Tonnes of Washed Dune sand into the greens to a depth of approx. 4 inches. This was Ken's third visit to the West Links starting on Sunday afternoon and finishing on Monday evening.
Ken Siems with the Dry-Ject on the 1st green - not a bad spot to spend a Sunday afternoon.
An example of the sand-injected channel from the 15th green.
Following Dry-Ject, we overseeded the greens with Fescue seed using the Blec Multi-Seeder followed by a brush and a roll.
Although Sunday and Monday were mostly focused on supplying sand to the Dry-Jects, on Tuesday we managed to give the Vredo Overseeder its maiden run on the 3rd and 14th fairways. Fairways were also sprayed with Wetting Agent, iron, ammonium sulphate and seaweed. Preparations were also started for the course to reopen on Wednesday morning for the 9 Hole Medal.
The 8th green on Thursday following the maintenance closure
The whole team were impressed with the minimal disruption the Dry-Jects left and the surfaces have been performing well considering the work that had been done. A huge thanks to Ken and Jacob for their great service and attention to detail.
Great to see. Greens were actually faster than they looked. Just need some heat to encourage growth.
Appreciate the detailed update.
Thanks to all involved.