Topdressing

It's been a few weeks since my last post and things are growing in nicely. The irrigation crew is complete with the irrigation system and it is up and running. We now have the capability of watering the golf course with hand held radios and a computer. The computer will mainly be used for the majority of our watering needs at night. The hand held radios will be used throughout the day to water on demand when necessary. Let me tell you, it's much better than what we had before. Thank you!

Our crew has been working incredibly hard to get the course ready for play in a few weeks. One of our biggest priorities has been to clean up the irrigation trenches. After the contractor compacts the trench, we need to go behind them to rake the ditch, seed, and install mulch mat to get grass growing back over the trenches. This is a very time consuming process. In addition to that work we aerified and topdressed our old greens (1,3-8) and all of the tees twice. The new greens that were rebuilt in the fall (10, 12, 14-18, and 2) were aerified once and topdressed heavily. The new greens that were rebuilt this spring have been topdressed heavily to try to get them smooth for this season (9,11,13).

Did you ever wonder what we did with all of the old bunker sand that we took out? We stockpiled it at our maintenance facility and used it to topdress the aprons around the greens that were rebuilt (2, 9-18). Due to the fact that some of the sod outside of the greens had to be removed and re-laid during the construction process, we have used the sand to help smooth these areas out, just like on the greens.

The grass on #7 that was seeded on the drainage project area is growing in nicely. It will still take quite a bit of time until it is ready for play but the fairly warm weather has been great for germination.

Spence Golf Finished for Spring

We had another great week of weather and once again got a lot of work completed. The Spence Golf crew wrapped up their work this week. They finished sodding #11 green on Monday morning. They then moved over to complete the drainage work on #7. Most of the work had been done in December and required some finish work.

While the Spence crew was finishing their detail work on #7, we began our work. First we seeded the areas with a Kentucky bluegrass/Perennial ryegrass blend. We then aerified the fairway and blew and picked up the plugs and spread them out over the drainage areas. We did this to help blend in the poa that we have in our fairways and make the areas not so visually noticeable.

Seeding #7

Blowing Plugs

Picking up plugs with our core harvester.

Spread out aerification plugs.

After our aerification and seeding, the Spence crew spread out the mulch mat over the entire area. Mulch mat helps to retain soil moisture and enhance seed germination. This is also what we have been using on all of our irrigation trenches. We then began irrigating the area to start the grow in process.

The Spence Golf crew also finished the back tee on #3. They put the mix on the tee above the drainage and finished sodding the complex. After this was completed, the crew moved the mix out of the golf shop parking lot, cleaned up a bit and moved out until the fall.

The irrigation crew also made great progress. Hole #4 was irrigated this week. All that is left for the irrigation crew will be to irrigate hole #3, irrigate a few bunkers on the front side, and then check and test the entire system to make sure everything is functioning properly and all of the heads are properly adjusted. I estimate the remainder of their work to take about a week and a half if the weather cooperates.

When the final test and system inspection is conducted, I can assure you that Ross will be on hand to supervise. He has diligently tested the pressure of the sprinklers and watched to make sure they are working properly throughout this entire process!