Busy Times

It always seems fall is one of the busiest times for the greens and grounds department. The fall of 2013 is no exception as we have been very busy attending to small projects and areas of the course that need tender loving care.

Range Closure

The south half of the driving range tee is closed for the remainder of the 2013 golf season. The north portion of the range tee will stay open in the mean time.   The reason for the closure of one half is so that we can grow-in the south half of the range tee before winter.  Once the course opens in the Spring of 2014 we will flip and hit off the south portion and close the north portion. 

One of the problems with the range tee in the past is that it fills in nicely but the ground underneath is unstable making the ground explode after a shot.  In order to curtail this problem we are going to be using a more organic divot mixture (60% sand 20% topsoil and 10% peat) which will give us a few more advantages: i.) increase germination ii.) give us better water holding capacity which is more desirable in this instance iii.) provide more stability in the soil structure so that it holds together better.

Today we are heavily over seeding, fertilizing and topdressing with the new “organic” divot mixture.



Heavy topdressing with seed
mixture.

New divot mix!



 

Approach Aeration

Starting Sunday night we started core aerating our collars and approaches.  We core aerated from the last fairway sprinkler head up to the putting surface and around the collar.  It is a multi-step process which has went very smoothly so far.  Later this week we will be topdressing the approaches again to make sure all of the holes are filled.  You can expect collars/approaches to be heavily sanded for the next week until the area heals in and sand works its way into the turf canopy.

One of the goals going forward is to make our approaches play like our putting surfaces.  We want to achieve the same firmness from approach to green.  This will ensure a shot landing on the approach can reach the green.  So far in the past couple of seasons we have been able to add about 1” of topdressing sand to the surface of our approaches.  We will continue to strive to provide more consistency from approach through the green. 
 


Tony aerating #11 app.

Finished product.

Sod Nursery



As I have mentioned before the surface of the nursery is seeded.  After 8 days, we started to see seedlings emerge from the sandy surface.  By the start of next week we will be looking at giving the nursery its first mow.  The bluegrass and fairway portion are almost ready to be seeded and will be completed by the end of the week.  






8 days after seeding