Sod Nursery Project

Last Thursday we completed the greens portion of the sod nursery over by the maintenance facility. There are many steps and hard work that go into building a sod nursery. Here are some of the steps we have been working on in the past couple of weeks.

1. Leveled the sub grade with a bulldozer.
2. Removed large rocks.
3. Installed irrigation to the nursery which consisted of 600+ feet of pipe, several sprinklers, electrical wire and fittings to hold everything in place.
4. Added 3-4” of sandy loam mixture over the sub grade to the greens portion of the sod nursery. Presently our greens on the course have 3-4” of sand in the upper portion of its profile, we replicated that scenario on our nursery by adding this mix so that it matches perfectly with the greens on the golf course.
5. We compacted the sand and leveled it smooth.
6. Next we seeded the surface with an improved variety of bentgrass and added a starter fertilizer.
7. After seeding we used our sand pro rake with its knobby tires to make small dimples in the sand. This allows for a good place for the seed to germinate because these little dimples hold water and do not allow the seed to blow away or run off.
8. Over seeded the area again with an improved variety of bentgrass.
9. We covered the surface with our permeable greens covers to incubate the seedbed in cooler weather.
10. We have been watering the nursery light and frequently since seeding and covering the surface.

There is still some work to do before we seed the fairway and rough portion of the nursery. We have to level the surface and in some areas remove some small rock before we seed this portion of the nursery. Once completed we will have 13,000 square feet of greens sod, 7,000 square feet of collar/fairway sod and approximately 3,000 square feet of rough sod.  We hope to see some germination in the next month.

Thanks to all who played in the fall fling and supported this great long term investment!

Stay tuned for updates and pictures of this project.