February spiking of greens.....

Yesterday we used the spiker attachment on the sand pro to open up the greens. After we rolled you can hardly tell we did anything. Considering all the rain we have been receiving. I also took advantage of this time to spray the wetting agent Duplex. This application will help with water infiltration. 

First 2013 update

 The storm last week brought cold temps, snow, and even a flood.

You can see in the picture how high the water came out of the creek on # 8 tees. You can see how the snow fell on the areas not covered by water.

 # 4 green looking back at fairway

 Once again the silt came out and covered the bermudagrass and filled the bunker. We have since cleaned and removed the silt.

 Some of the debris left under # 15 bridge after the high waters

 

We are using the trencher attachment to do a little tree root pruning along the fairways.

 You can see just how many feeder roots the trees put out. 

All these roots compete for moisture and nutrients with the struggling bermudagrass.

We have redefined edged on bunkers, also redistrubted the sand to adequat sand depts.

 Another task we took on was to redesign the sand bins. One of our issues was that the water runoff collected in the back of the bin.

 Keeping the sand moisture levels high

 We used the Bobcat to reposition all the stacked block.

 We turned the bin pararel to the slope so that runoff would not enter the bin.

By redoing the topdressing bin we will be able to purchase dry sand which will help with working sand into the aerificaion holes. Giving us better dilution of the greens mix.

November 27, 2012

 # 7 Green after a late season aerification.

 We reseeded and fertilized this green hopefully to thicken up this green in the spring. With the two fans we installed plus all the seed and babysitting. We should be in good shape for next summer.

 Pre-emerge going out. We used Princep Simazine to control Poa Annua and some winter annuals. This is a great product for poa and is very cost effective

 You can see the blue hue in the distant fairway this is the tracker so we know what has been sprayed and what has not.
You can see its not a big difference but enough to locate your sprayed areas.

November Update......

Leaf season is upon us. We are making great strides in leaf control. We have had the blowers going and are even starting to burn the leaves that have been collecting in the woods in between holes.


We have also had a few frost delays, but today we had the heaviest frost so far with temperatures at 34 degrees.

The course is in overall great shape with the greens rolling fast and true. The few thin turf spots on the edges of the greens are healing up well. We will be continuing with the brush clean up and tree removal around the course over the next couple of weeks. We have already cleared #8, 10, 15, 18 hillsides and behind #7 green.

Summer of 2012 coming to a close.

We always say goodbye to summer with a good aerification of the greens. We pulled 5/8" cores last week. We also spot seeded some of the thin areas on the greens. With the 14-28-8 starter fertilizer we put out the greens should be back in good shape by this weekend. 

July thru August update...........

We have been very busy with the course this summer.  First was that our pump station was hit by lighting June 31st.

 You can see the black marks where the surge protectors exploded. This strike took out 6 fuses, 2 starters for our main pumps plus our PLC controller. We just recently got everything back up and going. Our pump station was down for 41 days this summer. We only had available one small jockey pump running by manual control. Our priority was just to keep the greens watered and occasionally we turned a tee box or two on for a couple of minutes. You can see in the pic below some of the stressed off color bermudagrass.

You can see the difference irrigation makes.

Heat stress on #7 and #3 Greens

Justin spiking #18 green

One of the biggest thing to happen is the installation of fans on #7 and #9 greens. These greens have special needs since there locations are less than prefect for growing bentgrass during the summer.

All in all this wasn't a terrible summer but we experienced some difficult days. We are looking forward to a wonderful fall golf season. We will be aerating greens August 20th and 21st.  

Venting greens.........

With the last 2 days being in the low 80's, 

I felt it was a good time to squeeze in a little maintenance on our greens. 

We vented with 3/8" tines
 followed by rolling and topdressing.

I also made a application of gypsum along with 0-0-30 POS.

With temperatures expected to be around 100* for the next three days.
 These efforts should help provide some relief over the next couple of days.