Golf Course Update...

Since my last post the golf course and grounds dept. has been very busy. Last Sunday/Monday we were able to complete our spring aeration on greens. With the saturated soils that we have been dealing with this spring, we decided to use our newly acquired Verti-Drain deep tine aerifier in place of our standard greens aerifiers. This machine allows us to create deep channels in our putting surfaces. These channels not only allow water to drain freely to the bottom of the root zone, they create a perfect opportunity for air, sand and nutrients to reach deep into the root zone. During this practice we were able to top dress with a large quantity of sand (actually 45 tons for 3 acres of greens surface). Sand topdressing not only dilutes organic matter levels, but it also helps to speed up recovery and provides a firm and smooth putting surface. Our membership's patience is greatly appreciated during these processes as well as during the recovery time. In this instance, recovery time was minimal. With the rain that we have been receiving in the past 24 hours, I would expect to get back to a regular greens mowing schedule on Monday.
Another accomplishment this week was actually getting the golf course mowed. This proved to be a challenging task this season. We are now back on track with our mowing schedules. Our rough is very lush and thick right now. The spring weather that we have experienced this season has created a monster! We have began to mow our rough at our regular summer height, it just seems a bit extreme right now. As we begin to dry out, the rough will be back to it's regular playability.
We were also able to put down a few skids of sod this past week. All stump holes and some cart path edges/endings have been tied in. Our plans for this coming week are to continue mowing, perform some fertilization and work away at solid tine aeration and topdressing of approaches and tees (weather permitting). Although, with a quick check of the forecast, mother nature may have different plans for us....

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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.

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...

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...

HIGHLAND CC GROUNDS

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