Skip to main content

Golf Course Update

The end of the 2011 golf season has come...our staff has been working away at preparing the golf course for the long winter months. We are currently deep slicing the fairways and will then move into the rough. The weather has cooperated nicely for our winter protection/snow mould preventative fungicide application. Greens, Tees and Fairways were all sprayed this week. It is important for us to complete this in perfect conditions, as we require the product to dry completely into the plant for long term efficacy. We also have begun our dormant/late fall fertilizer applications to Greens, Tees and Rough. This application will aid in carbohydrate storage for winter, also helping with spring green up. We have one more Vertidrain aeration to perform on our Greens next week. More holes = More drainage.
The crew has been continuing to work away at bunker edging. Using a pitchfork, we have been ripping back the overgrown, sandy edges (mostly on the backs).The edges are then tamped down by hand to roll the edge to the sand. This practice returns the bunkers to the original size and shape. As mentioned before, the look of our bunkers is more natural with this technique. No longer do we have a sharp, defined soil lip at the edge. This task will be completed by the week's end. As the temperatures slowly drop we will schedule the permeable cover installation on our Greens. Historically we have the covers down by American thanksgiving...it is a benchmark for us, although it is all weather dependent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Practice Range Tee

Last fall we utilized a “new to us” method of revitilization for our practice tee. Our contractor TDS,  fraize mowed the surface of the tee to remove organic matter as well at to aid in leveling. The tee was then aerified and seeded to a new variety of creeping rye grass. We chose this type of turf grass as research  shows rapid recovery and a low growth habit. We were able to get some great growth in the fall, but the tee is still not ready for traffic and full use. The plan is to utilize the mats until growth has filled in some of the voids etc. We will then begin to slowly set up hitting areas on the grass tee. For a while we will alternate between grass and the mats with a 50/50 ratio of use. Once the grass tee is established and is in adequate recovery mode, the practice areas will be back to normal. As always our membership’s patience is appreciated as we try to improve these areas for use.
Post a Comment
Read more

Spring Greens Aeration...a week later!

A week has passed since our annual spring greens aeration. We have had a mixed bag of weather, hot, dry, cold, wet and even frost! These conditions make it challenging to aid in healing, but with the more recent consistent warm temperatures we are seeing solid recovery. We were fortunate to have decent weather to complete the process on time, allowing us to fill all the holes created by the 1/2” hollow tines. As there are some minor depressions within some of the holes we will be beginning our bi-weekly topdressing program early next week. Our team is mowing and rolling our greens daily, while slowly lowering our height of cut to our summer norm. We all know that spring cultural practices are not popular among golfers, but these all important tasks are the building blocks for high performance greens conditions throughout the heart of the golf season. Check out this video produced by the USGA on Aerations effect on putting...
Post a Comment
Read more

Venting Greens...

This week we will be venting our greens with needle tines. These tines make a hole that is less than an 1/8th of inch. With our greens being completely saturated from the incredible amount of rain that we have recieved this season, there is no room for air movement in the soil. We need to create very small channels for air movement to the root zone. When roots don't have air, they die. This has not been evident yet, but with the warmer temperatures of July upon us soon, trouble could be lurking. This will be a very non-disruptive process to our members and play. We are going to vent all of our greens over then next few days early in the morning as to not disrupt play. The process is simple, we vent the green using the aerifier and needle tines, roll them smooth and then mow the green. The holes virtually dissapear and are of no effect to roll. I realize that the word aerifier starts to scare people, but this is necessary and again is very clean and non-disruptive. Check out the pic...
1 comment
Read more