Labour Day marks a few things for us at the Grounds Dept. First and foremost it is our Club Championship weekend. A lot of work goes on throughout the club to ensure a great weekend is had by all. Secondly, we begin to lose a few of our summer staff members, our students are a valuable portion of our staff and we will miss them. Third, the end of summer is upon us, this summer has been very stressful for both turf grass and staff...the heat and humidity has taken it's toll on both. September is a welcomed month with the shorter days and the cooler temperatures. Last but not least, now that we are on our way out of the most stressful time for turf grass, we will be ramping up our cultural practices again. Next week we will be lightly topdressing greens, we will then be venting all of our greens as well. This is a very non disruptive process as the holes that we punch are very, very small. There is no recovery time with this process, the greens will be back to normal (actually better) once the process is complete. This practice is vital to the health of our greens, the heavy rains are clogging our root zone and the high temperatures are restricting root growth. September is a perfect time to encourage root growth to sustain a healthy plant going forward into the fall and winter.
As our season slowly comes to a end our department has been working away at year end projects. We installed drainage in a few areas of the practice range and short game area. These areas were perpetually wet and caused turf and aesthetic issues. We have also been chipping away at the bunkers on #17, smoothing out the faces and recreating the grass edges. These bunkers suffered some severe frost heaving in the faces during the winter after they were built. Our team has removed a number of trees and brush from around our maintenance facility to allow some expansion of our operation. We are working away at clearing space to install aggregate bins and sufficient staff parking. This will also allow delivery trucks and semi's to access our facility without any issues. We are also removing the fallen trees and brush from the woodlot on the right side of #16 fairway. This is a challenging area to work as it is a peat bog and remains wet even in the hottest and driest of summers (like 2010)...
Comments
Post a Comment