Clogged Drain In #9 Fairway

     Before we opened up the golf course we had to install a drain down the middle of #9 fairway to contol the run off from the tee area as the soil in the upper portion of this hole is pretty bad and doesn't allow that much water to penetrate the surface. The drain has worked pretty well for the better part of two years but this past summer we started to notice an area just past the fairway bunker that was a little more sturated than it had been in the past. Then, after the rain this last weekend we noticed an area in the middle of the fairway that had a lot of sand coming to the surface. So this past week we decided to get to the "root" of the problem and find out what was going on with our drain. Come to find out it really was roots that were causing the problems. The piture below is a picture of all of the roots that were pulled out of the 4" drain line. Hopefully we will get some more rain soon to test out the drain now that it is cleaned out.

Finally Wet And Not Frozen

     Well it's been over a month since we've had any rain. In the last couple of days we've received over an 1 1/2" and it seems like the ground sucked it up pretty quick. The last couple of days we've spent most of our time picking up branches and debris from Friday nights storm.
     The rain this weekend allowed us to get the greens top dressed and a good application of gypsum on Friday. Hopefully this isn't the only rain we get this month!
      Below are a few pictures from this weekends storm. Fortunately we only lost one tree but plenty of debris was blown all over the course.

Debris on #9

Fairway bunker on #9



Tree down between #12 & #13



Wet area by the putting green



New Year...No rain...A Lot Going on....

     Happy new year to all of our followers and golfers. I am very happy to see the last year come and go and we are all very excited about what the new year will bring to our course. We started out the first half of 2011 with a bunch of rain (even into June!!) and finished off that year with a long drought. In the last six months of the year we only 3.18", which in a typical year is pretty low for us. The lack of rain has definitely put a damper on course conditions as we really haven't had a good flushing of all the salts and bad stuff that comes from our irrigation water. Here's to a few good storms in January and February and maybe even one in June again!!

The frost has also put a damper on things as most all of the turf has basically shut down and is barely growing. This makes things a little difficult as the wear and worn out areas are not rejuvenating as fast as we would like and any new seed we put down in divots is taking a long time to begin growing.
     With the new year comes a few new projects that we are really excited to start. The first being the new posts and cable that will run the entire length of #4. If you've been out playing lately you probably have seen where we cut out the sod along the cart path for the new posts.

We also took this opportunity to run some extra irrigation wires down the length of the hole for some future sprinkler additions. 
We've tried the posts and cable in a couple other areas (ie. #3 green and the putting green) with great success. It costs a little more to go with the posts and cable over the split rail fence but in the long run it should last a lot longer. A couple other projects on the horizon include a bunch of drainage in #6 fairway and some new sprinkler heads to help fine tune our irrigation system. We have also started the first stages of a nursery green behind #2 tee. More to come on these projects in later posts.
      I hope that Santa was as good to y'all out there this year as he was to us here in the maintenance department. We were very fortunate to receive a few new gifts by the way of new equipment. A new Toro Workman HD, an R&R Tee Mower and a Ryan Sod Cutter were a few of the gifts under our tree. Here's a couple of pictures of the new items in our shop. You should be seeing these out on the course very soon!



New Diesel Workman



Jim putting together the new tee mower