Course Update

With that passing of Hurricane Irene the course fared really well. With the usual debris to clean up and two trees that came down on #17. The rain was very slow which helped our bunkers make it through with very little wash outs.  A few other things that will take place this week is the stripping of the sod on #3, the sod will be replaced  on Wednesday. Continuing to seed our rough as well as the intermediate that have been sprayed for Bermuda control. There is one important thing I would like to bring up as it pertains to seed in the rough. We have already begun the germination process and we are seeing a lot of seed popping in our thin areas. With that said it is extremely important that we keep off the rough to allow the seedlings a chance to grow. If we do not control the cart traffic then all will be for not. So this week we are cart path only as well as for blue flags. I know that this will be an inconvenience but this is necessary to regain grass in the rough. Now one last thing, because we are cart path only please be aware as you park and drive near the cart path edge, it is very important to remain on the path due to some areas being wetter than others.

Annual Rough Seeding

We have already begun to inter-seed our rough areas with tall fescue. As you can see in the picture this machine creates a channel into the soil and drops the seed into the channel there by creating a good seed to soil contact. We are doing this in the areas that we have sprayed for bermuda along with worn out traffic areas. This is a process but every year we seem to have less and less to do. On Monday of next week we plan on removing the bermuda on #3 fairway and will proceed to sod these areas on Wednesday along with the intermediate seeding around the fairways and greens.

#3 Fairway Bermuda Update

On Monday we sprayed the areas in the Fairway on hole #3 that contained Bermuda. This is exactly what we had done to #1 last year. The first photo was taken right after the spray and the second photo was taken this morning five day later. We will round up again on Monday, then that following Monday proceed to remove and sod. Until we sod we ask you to please stay off this fairway with carts so that we do not track the round up.

Aerification Update

Things are going really well, as I type this we just have 6 more holes to aerify and the clean up crew is steadily behind. We spot sprayed the Bermuda on hole #3 and will await its departure for the year. In about a week or so we plan to sod these areas out. One final icing on the cake is last night we received almost 2 inches of rain. So not only do we have to complete our green and tee aerification but also repair the bunkers from the heavy storm.

#1 Fairway Round-up Dab

Last year we embarked on a big challenge of removing the Bermuda that has been growing in a few select fairways. We initially started on #1 and #2 with round up,that was comparatively speaking almost more than half the fairway, approximately 13,000 square feet. As you can see in the photo to the right that was taken last year. This year we have shrunken these spots to a square foot at most in some areas and others to the size of an index card. To keep on attacking this problem we have implemented phase 2 which is the use of round up dabbers in a tube that can pin point a direct hit on the Bermuda, minimizing the loss of bent grass around the unwanted grass as seen in the next couple of photos.

#8 sub air at work

As you are aware we have been pretty dry over the past couple of weeks. And the irrigation has not been able to be utilized well because of the extreme heat that we have been receiving. When we take a soil probe and probe the greens we have been significantly drier down below approximately 4 plus inches down and semi dry on top.  Most of our root structure is in this area and in a lot of cases 6 inches deep. We have done this on purpose to keep the greens on the dry side to limit the chances of disease also to reduce the soil temps in the profile. Things are looking good weather wise so we opted to do a flush on the greens last night. A couple of things a flush is good for is the removal of salts that accumulate when you rely on irrigation and hoses and  to completely wet down the entire profile 12 inches down. When you add enough water to a profile it creates a flushing effect similar to when you flush your toilet and allows us to get the greens to field capacity.  While the greens flush it is bringing in air into the profile. Having air (oxygen) intermix into your profile is very healthy for the plant creating an aerobic environment. Now because we flushed the greens, the goal for the #8 green is to dry this green down at a rapid pace utilizing the sub air that we installed. You can see in the photo how well this works by seeing the mist blowing out of the blower. In the future we hope to install this on a few more greens to promote the dry down process where we have limited air movement in time of heavy rains or when a flush is needed on the greens.