Summer 2014 Highlights

Where does the time go?  I had hopped to be able to keep this up to date at least once a month, maybe next year.  So I thought I would post up some pictures from the time of my last blog until now.

This is one of my assistants spraying fertilizer on the greens.  80% of the fertilizer the greens receive comes in the form of weekly sprayings.  We do this to spoon feed the greens small amounts of the nutrients that they need according to soil testing.  This year we have expanded this program to the fairways and the results were amazing to say the least.  They  had controllable growth, held the ball up great, and had great color.  Next year we will spray the tees also.  The liquid fertilizer a little more expensive but the benefits are worth the price.

More pictures of Jill our landscapers fantastic work.  This year was her first year with us and next year she plans even more color and has taken many notes of what works in certain areas and what doesn't.

We had a few good windstorms come through during the summer.  This tree went down on 7 fairway half of it is still standing but we will be removing the rest of it this winter.

This fall we had an algae flair up on the pond buy 13 green it got really smelly.  This picture is of my assistants treating the pond with some chemical and breaking up the big clumps of algae in hopes of them sinking to the bottom.

This root actually grew between the wires and the pipe.  We had to cut the root out because the pipe had developed a leak.  We are very lucky it had not pulled the wires enough to cause them to break.

This deer was inspecting the bunker to make sure it was raked properly.

One of the great benefits of my job is I get to witness many beautiful sunrises.

All the golfer ready to roll for our Labor day Open.

Fairway aeration and one of our operators.

This is how we aerate the greens when we want to pull a core. The size and spacing can all be adjusted. This fall we pulled a 1/2 inch core some years we pull a 5/8 but with the late aeration I felt it was more important to make sure the holes healed then the amount of material removed.

This is the machine we use to apply the sand to the greens, our goal is to put down an amount to completely fill the holes.

There are many ways we work the sand into the greens we use blowers, metal mats, and brushes.

This is the two assistants getting ready to sand topdress the fairways. Usually we put down about 450 tons of sand but budget reasons and weather conditions this fall we only put down 300 tons. The purpose of the sand is the same as for the greens it helps with thatch control and an added bonus it makes the worm casting a little more sandy which don't smear on the fairways quite as bad.

New Rough mower with over 6000 hours the old mower had become to costly to maintain for everyday duty.

Early Summer Update

It has been a few weeks since my last post as we have been very busy on the course.  Mother nature has been very kind with some timely rains so we have not had to run the irrigation much or do much hand watering which has allowed us to get some projects done but I think that is changing now as I see some triple digits in the forecast.  Our new landscape manger Jill is doing a fabulous job on the flowers and so far she is succeeding with keeping the deer at bay with her Irish spring soap on a stick.

Irish Spring on a stick

We built a new mix tank which allows us to mix two tanks of fertilizer at once.  This is a large time saver  and allows us to foliar feed the fairways which saves money and is a more accurate application.

Mix Tank

The new greens are doing very well we did a double verticut on them and this is the amount of grass I removed off just one of the greens.  Verticuting is like a thatcher that cuts the blades which grow sideways and encourages more upright growth and helps manage the thatch.  We also verticut and sand all the greens every other week for thatch control and smoothness of the greens.

Verticut grass off of 6 green

Our new flags with new logo

Planting of new trees right of 5 tee

Tim Kastning is letting us use his tree spade to move these large spruce trees from his nursery.  We plan to put about 6 or 7 in to screen the transfer station.

Maverick keeping an eye on the deer so they don't eat the flowers

June Update

I have been so busy I have not had a chance to update the blog but I will post some pictures and what is going on around the course.

All the bark and flowers are in..  We have a new Landscaper this year , her name is Jill.
It will be interesting she is trying Irish Spring soap on a stick to keep the deer out of the flowers.

Maverick keeping a close eye on the deer

We are about half done with installing the new numbers on the tee signs.  It takes about an hour to drill each one

When you have ponds this is bound to happen.  It didn't hurt the mower we just change the  fluids out to be safe.  We average about a mower a year in a pond.

5 and 6 green are progressing very well

But we still have some shade issues on 6 that we will have to address this fall.  It has been a real eye opener to see how much shade effects turfgrass.  5 green is is about a week ahead of 6 in terms of maturity.  6 green has much more light then in the past but is still losing 3 hours every morning.

New Greens Open

The new greens are open today, 5 weeks after installation.  As I have been preaching these are very young greens and they will not be putting like the regular greens for awhile.  We have to slowly lower the height of cut. Once they have matured a little more we will start getting the speed close to the other greens.  We will be mowing these greens with a different mower as to match the speed the height of cut will be different.

Holes 5 and 6 update

The new greens are progressing very well. We should be on track for an opening around May 15th. We have mowed them 6 times and are now going to an every other day mowing schedule. We have also hydrojected them 2 times and which aerates and smooths them out. Yesterday day we sanded and aerated them with 1/4 tines and then rolled them again.  The current height of cut is 0.235.  By the summer they should be around 0.140.

The sod has rooted in about 1.5 inches so far.

We topdressed the green first so we would not make ruts on the green

 An added advantage of sanding first is that a good portion of the sand vibrates into the holes which results in much less dragging.

Repair of Practice Bunker

The time has come to repair our practice bunker.  The reason being is that in 20 years the bunker face has grown to the point that is has become too steep.  Our plan is to lower the face of the bunker and remove the center thumb which will increase the amount of usable practice area.  We should be able to complete this processes in about a week.

Buildup of sand after many years of practice

The thumb we will be removing to increase the amount of usable practice area 

First mowing of new green installed 4 days ago. HOC 0.280