Spring has arrived at South Essex,with warm sunshine  making grass grow and bringing out the golfers to enjoy the course.The woodland floors are ablaze with that fantastic blue haze of the bluebells,and if you look carefully the odd white one as well.

6th tee heron with lesser celandine in the foreground

The greens have all been top dressed and fed and after Easter we hope to repeat the process to restore the surface smoothness.
The Pond on the 9th Vixen has been cleaned out around the edges and the drainage pipes exposed to improve there flow into the pond from the 4th Fairway

Its at this time of the year that we check over the irrigation system to ensure all is well when we need it and carry out any remedial repairs

Sean investigating a solonoid valve problem 9th Heron

You may have noticed in the mornings on some greens grubs  moving over the surface.These are the grubs of the crane fly which is seen flying in September.We did apply an insecticide in the autumn,but some grubs have survived ,why they decided to come to the surface  is a mystery  but I collected this hand full on the 9th Vixen,these grubs spend there life (1-2 Yrs) in the soil eating grass roots which can have a detrimental effect on the plants to take in nutrients and water and so inhibit the grass to resist other stresses like pest, diseases and environmental factors .

leather jackets

We are preparing a couple of new wildflower areas,one on the carpark mounding and the other behind the 1st green Heron

                                                   watering the wildflower area in carpark

                                                Sam sowing at 2grams/mtr

mowing off the grass for new wildflower area

raking off the cut grass

This area was then sprayed with a total weed control

We recently suffered mayhem out on the course when some so called golfers hired golf carts to go joy riding,damaging,greens,braking flag pins,posts and rails,driving through the blue bell woods and damaging the carts as well,The green staff worked quickly to carry out the necessary repairs over the two days that these incidents occurred

The honey bees are working hard now as are the bumble bees out on the course