Hello Members,

På grunn av ferieavvikling er nyhetsbrevet kun på engelsk denne gangen.

We have had some nice summer weather back for a few days this week. Unfortunately, we have had heavy rainfall early Friday morning, which has caused washouts to the roads and bunkers. We will try to get all roads repaired by the end of Friday, but it is most likely that the bunkers will be out of play over the weekend.

One thing you might have noticed over the past few weeks is we have had some damage from Leatherjackets (larver avmyrstankelbein) on our greens on Østmork. Greens 11 and 16 have been affected the worst.

Leatherjackets cause damage and effect the surface in two ways. Firstly, they eat the roots and the crown of the grassplant. This causes the grass to thin out and leaves bare areason the surface. Also, if you look closely, you will see a small hole where they burrow into surface. When they do this, they leave a small mound of soil and sand. Both unfortunately, can impact the ball roll. 

There is no easy way to prevent damage from leather jackets. Chemical control is no longer available, although there may be new products come to the market in the coming years. What we have tried in the past few nights, is to cover the worst affected greens with a plastic sheet. This causes the Leatherjackets to come to the surface. We are then able toremove the Leatherjackets. I can gladly say this has been quite successful and we see less activity on the greens we have covered. 

The larva is soon entering a phase where they will burrow down into the surface and emerge as a Carne Fly (stankelbein)in late July/early August. During this period, they are not active, which means we can start working on the greens to help them recover. There is a risk of birds pecking the surfacelooking for the larva, but we have not experienced very much of this in the past. We will continue to maintain the greens as we normally would and try to make the surface of the worst affected greens as acceptable as possible. 

We see this season the damage has been worse than previous years. After talking with other golf clubs in the area, they are also experiencing the same. We can probably put this down to last summer being very wet as Leatherjackets like a moist surface. We do see some damage to approaches and fairways, but greens seem to be an easier target due to a sand construction and shorter grass length. 

In the coming week we look forward to hosting the Srixon Tour here at Losby. The tournament days will be on Wednesday and Thursday. We would like to wish all the players the best of luck and hope they enjoy playing here at Losby. 

We’ll be back with an update next week. Wishing everyone a nice start to the summer holidays.

Regards,
Jonny and team.