Bermuda Suppression

As of today we have made numerous applications to the tees and fairways to suppress the bermuda. As I have stated before there is no guarantee what will happen and after this winter we will evaluate and see how we progressed. Because of the applications, it has caused some areas of the fairways to become thin and as a result of that we are going to back off for a bit and let the fairways recover. Once recovered we will resume the applications until the colder temperatures.

Around a few greens and bunkers we have been spot spraying the bermuda and this has worked really well. We are seeding these areas to tall fescue and they should resume there intended look within two weeks. If they are slow to establish we will go ahead and sod them for quicker recovery. Although unsightly and cumbersome this is what we need to do until there are better ways to eradicate this weed.

Parking Lot Trees

You may have already noticed but there has been some tree work going on in the parking lot, more specifically the cutting down of the trees we just planted last winter.  Lets take a step back and remind ourselves how bad of a winter we had in relation to temperatures. There was a lot of plant material that did not make it and this happens to be one area. Nothing is ruled out but there appears to be a number of factors that can happen to stress a tree. Once a tree is stressed apparently it puts out an alcohol smell that attracts insects that burrow into the tree. That then starts to damage the tree even more, when we inspected them they had all of the signs as to insect damage. The tree nursery is on the ball and we have started the removal process by first cutting them down and then grinding the stumps. All trees are covered by a warranty and we are looking to plant sometime in September or beyond.

Fore The Golfer: Why Aerate The Greens?

Golf Course Update

The weather has put a slight delay on the process and we are quickly getting back on track. Greens are complete with just a few amendments to still add to them and the use of a large roller to roll out any imperfections. This helps smooth out any tire traffic from using implements during the entire process.

Our goal today is to finish the core clean up and have the front 9 top dressed. We hope to broom in the sand by the start of the weekend. We anticipate a first mowing of the greens tomorrow and then possibly one over the weekend.  Because we have a lot of sand on the greens we are raising the heights for a few days and then we will gradually bring them back down as the sand starts to disappear.

We hope to have our normal mowing schedule back on track at the beginning of next week along with our routine bunker maintenance.

Pulling Cores on Tees 

Pushed off and ready for pick up

Ready to be top dressed with sand