Green and Fairway Aerification Underway

Better late than never, but we are finally punching holes in the greens.  A frost delay this morning held us back by 2 hours, so today we will finish 11 greens, leaving us 12 more to go tomorrow including our practice greens.  We are hoping to have all greens done tomorrow and then work on fairways and approaches the rest of the week.  Tough time of the year to pull cores as the sun is slow to come up and quick to go down but we will fight through it.  Clean up will take a little longer but hopefully by Friday we will have 80% of the fairways done.  Dryject is coming in on Wednesday to do our greens and then we will add nutrients on Thursday and topdress again if needed.  We probably will not mow greens, approaches or fairways until next week some time depending on weather.

Nursery Work

We are currently finishing stripping the barn hole fairway and rough to create a new turf nursery  that will be big enough for future needs.  The barn hole gets little usage with our improved practice facility so  we can better utilize this space to create a 20,000 sq ft nursery.  We will build the nursery with plugs from our greens this coming week when we aerify so we can create a nursery that matches our greens.  We have not pulled a core from our greens in 8 years and this will be the last time we do this probably for another 8.  We used the fairway sod for our drainage project the past few weeks and we have a few rolls left for the drainage still to be done.  We will also fill in the old bunkers as we do the nursery work.

Drainage Improvement Already

The area to the left of the 17th fairway has been a nuisance for more than 9 years.  A simple 1/2" of rain would leave puddles in the area and we would have to stake it off and not mow it for a while.  After the installation of a sump pump and some drain lines in the rough the picture below shows the area the day after almost 4" of rain, not a single drop of water.  Even the dog fainted when she saw it!

The Proper Way to Hit Balls on the Range

The picture above sent to me from George Cultraro shows how to properly hit balls on the range to help protect the life of the range tee.  Taking divots in a sporadic fashion wastes usable space and limits recovery time.  Thanks for the picture GC!

And So It Begins...

Putting in a few drain lines on the 17th fairway on the left side and the rough.  Only way to move water out of this location is to use a sump pump since the nearby ditch is not deep enough and we need to get the laterals deep enough to not be effected by aerification and to get some of the ground water that we are fighting.  The 17th, 16th and 5th fairways will need wide spread drainage and a few other holes will need some supplemental. 

Fairy Ring

This is fairy ring, a fungus on our 15th fairway which so happens to be one of our experimental fairways.  The fungus usually shows up as dark green circles and certain types of fairy ring will turn brown and others will remain green.  These were non evident and then immediately turned brown as soon as the rain stopped and hot weather emerged.  The rings are already healing and next year we will know that this fairway will be susceptible to this and we will plan accordingly.

Bye Bye Oak Tree

The large oak by 1 tee that was hit by lightning last month is already showing signs of die back at the top of the tree.  From the magnitude of the lightning strike, it was evident the vascular system was fried and the tree would eventually die.  Structurally the tree is sound but we will remove it in the coming weeks.