Nice Week for Maintenance

Now that the Arcola Cup is behind us, we have 2 weeks until our next big event and this was the perfect week to heavily topdress greens, approaches and chipping areas.  Our plan with the approaches are to let the sand sit for the week before mowing again on Friday and hopefully we get the thunderstorms they are predicting today to help wash it in.  On the greens, we are using our old greens mowers to mow for a few days as the sand will dull the mowers and this way we will protect our good greens mowers.  The speeds will slow a bit as the mowers are only picking sand and not cutting any grass so by the weekend we will be much better.

Rain Is Over, Start Preparing for the Arcola Cup

Now that the heavy rain and humidity are almost behind us, we turn our attention to prepping for the Arcola Cup this Friday.  Today we are using tow behind blowers to help dry the green surfaces so we can start double cutting.  With the high humidity and rains the past few days, our normal green speeds of 12 are no more now that the greens are lush and soft.  We will be getting green speeds back to normal in the next few days but we have to be careful that we do not stress them out as they are still soft.

Bluestem Plugging

Today the maintenance staff planted 600 little bluestem plugs in native areas, ditch banks and bunker edges.  These are small native grasses that will accent these areas, and also do not create the playability issues we are facing right now with our new fescue sod.

Venting Greens This Week

This will be the 2nd time in the last 2 weeks that we have vented greens.  Normally we do this every 2-3 weeks but with our busy tournament schedule this season, we have had to push them off.  With the Arcola Cup on the 18th and a busy August, we will probably do them again once before the August Clambake and the AJGA tournament the week of August 11th.   This process allows gas exchange in the soil and oxygen into the root zone.