Bunker Work

We have been working on some of our bunker surrounds. Between mowing grass and blowing leaves, this time of year has left little time for project work. We focused our energy on the greenside bunker on #5. The grass was thin and weak due to drought stress and sand accumulation from bunker play. As you will see from the pictures, we stripped the sod and began to rebuild the edges. This bunker had lost its original shape from edging, trimming and wear and tear of mowers, etc. To restablish the size and shape we dug back as far as the sand was into the surrounds, where the grass had grown through the sand into the bunker. Once we found the soil edge, we used soil filled burlap bags to establish a rolled over lip, to create the old style look that our golf course deserves. This method will eliminate the soil lip that creates issues with contamination and an unnatural look. In some cases we will not need to use the bags, for example on the back sides we can usually just dig out the soil and bullnose the lip as we have in the past. The burlap bags are great for our steep faced bunker edges that are predominantly on the front/greenside of the bunkers. As we work through some bunkers, we will begin to maintain the surrounds differently. There will not be a clean edge created by weedeating. There will be some additional labour in regularly blowing sand back into the bunker from the grass edge. This labour will be offset since we will no longer be weedeating the edges and dealing with washout contamination from the soil edges.