What A Difference 8 Months Makes

Same fairway top without drainage and the bottom with the recent drainage project that is still ongoing.  There are so many little depressions that it is almost impossible to get all the low spots but 95% of the fairway is improved with a few more minor laterals to go.  Once we address 5 and 16 our worst fairways will be behind us.

New Nursery Taking Shape

The barn hole fairway was eliminated and turned into a poa greens nursery last October 24th.  We used the plugs from our greens aeration to create it.  It has made great progress in a short period of time.  We will treat the fairway and the green all the same and the decision now is do we fill in the old bunkers or rebuild them.  This will be a great source of sod if we do any green expansions or we decide to build a new green.

Getting Fescue Ready for Season

We finally have time to address the fescue this spring.  We are going in to aggressively rake them out, clean up the debris we accumulate and then they will be sprayed with herbicides and mowed one last time before the season gets going.  We need to do this for a few years to help keep them thin and playable so this will help but not be a one and done practice.

Big Improvement

The cart path located by the 17th green that is used to access the driving range was upgraded this spring.  The path was widened significantly to allow 2 carts to easily pass each other and had drainage added to get surface water off of it.  Please stay on the cart path as now there is ample room so we do not have to continue to fix the edges throughout the season.

New Pesticide Signage

We installed new pesticide information signs on the 1st and 10th tees.  These are much nicer than the standard signs that we used to have and will give you all the information you need to know on what we are spraying and when the next upcoming sprays will take place.

Drainage 17 Fairway Nearing Completion

Drainage on 17 fairway is moving at a rapid pace.  We did the first 100 yards of the fairway in the fall and we are just about finished with the 120 yard section out from the green which was our worst part of the hole.  After the rain on Saturday we saw how quickly the drainage is working already.  Lets hope squeegeeing will never be needed again on this hole.  The crew has done a great job to move this project along quickly and limit disruption to the membership.

Last Big Item on 18

Paving took place today by the 18th tees and this marks the final big item for us to do to finish the 18th hole project.  Once the asphalt sets up, we will go in and soil and seed the path edges and we can call this project complete. 

17 Fairway Drainage Underway Again

In the fall of 2018 we started installing drainage in the front portion of the 17th fairway.  Construction projects in the late fall took precedent over finishing the fairway so now that we are getting caught up on our bigger projects, we are at it again covering about 100 yards out from the green.  It will take us several days this week to get this section done but we are moving at a good pace.  Looks like rain is coming Friday and Saturday so we can monitor how good of a job we are doing.

Drainage Completed

The front of the range tee was regraded and drained this spring to eliminate the pond we used to have following rain events.  Here is the front of the tee after 1" of rain last week.

Bunker Improvement Completed

In a previous post I explained how we are combining the two fairway bunker on #8 into 1 to address surface drainage issues and improve how the bunkers play.  We finished it this past week and it is much improved with fairway drainage that will intercept runoff before it washes out the bunker.

Recycling Asphalt and Concrete

After years of projects around the clubhouse and the course where we removed cart paths and concrete, we are having a contractor come in and crush the stockpile into material we can use in the future for cart path bases and other roads.  For what we would have spent on dumpsters to remove the material from Arcola, we now have materials to use for the next few years.

Drainage on Range

We are finally addressing the area in front of the range tee that after last year, we realized we needed to put drainage in.  The area most of the year was a small pond and hampered efforts to pick up balls and mow.  This should help the area as we raised and leveled it and now installed some pipe.
The area should be sodded by Monday or Tuesday of next week.