This Monday has been driven by projects. Chuck Cassick, our Horticulturalist, and his team have been working diligently in the parking lot spreading mulch. The majority of that work will be done today. Chuck still has a little more to do but the mulch will be finished by next Monday if all goes as planned. Chuck's Grounds department consists of himself and one seasonal employee. The golf course staff supplements labor as needed during big projects, plant installations and mulching.
We dove head first into another drainage project today. Our staff installed about 200 feet of drainage to the left of #4 green. Most people will remember that this area is usually a little wet and draining this swale will greatly improve playability and turf health. This project will take us all of today and a little of tomorrow morning to finish. In order to minimize disruption of play, we will be starting tee times off of #10 in the morning. This will give us roughly another 2 hours and 45 minutes to work on this project before play gets to us. That should give us plenty of time coupled with today to finish the project. We will not start tee times off of #10 often but it is a nice tool to spread out play, change the golf course, and allow extra time for front nine projects.
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| Extra care is taken to keep this project as clean as possible. We are utilizing this dry weather to drain habitually wet areas. |
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| 1. Sod is cut and lifted. 2. Trench is dug and soil removed. 3. Pipe is installed and back filled with gravel and sand. 4. Trench is tamped, leveled and sodded. | | | |
The collars are still slow to green up. The weather has cooled off and become a bit more normal. We continued work on these areas today with a solid tine aeration and a quick release Nitrogen application. The entire golf course also received an application of fertility today to help jump start the grass once warm weather really gets here. A lot of areas on the collars are still greening up and we are optimistic about the majority of these areas. Some of the highest traffic areas will be sodded and we will be evaluating them over the next two weeks. We have a closed Monday on April 21 that may be prime for sodding out bad spots in collars if weather permits. We are lucky that we have experienced little to no winter kill on any fairways or tees. Our main focus right now is the collars and putting greens. The greens have looked a little bruised as we are still exiting the aeration process and beginning to firm up and gain speed. The bruising is a side affect of rolling after topdressing. The longer leaf blades rub against the sand and bruise. As we continue to get a better quality of cut and work through the sand, the bruising should be greatly reduced.
