Hurricane @ The Pines

No, Hurricane Sandy did not come anywhere close to us here on the west coast and our hearts go out to all those affected by this horrible storm. But if you saw the mess we created between #5 & #6 today, it looked like we had strong winds from a hurricane knock down a couple of trees. Actually it was Tom at it again, knocking the last couple of dead pines down in the rough.



After another back 9 start for the golfers we were able to have a little more time to get most of the mess cleaned up with a little left for tomorrow, depending on the rain in the forecast.
One of the difficulties we had with cutting down these two trees was the location of the two irrigation clocks that were set right between the base of both trees. But again Tom and company were on top of the situation and as you can see from the picture below he came up with a pretty good idea to help protect the clocks. Fortunately he was able to fall the trees away from the clocks and so there weren't any close calls.



Here now is a before and after picture of the 5th hole. This should help open up the right half of the fairway for those playing from the blue tees.







- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Storage Bins and Compost

This last week we ordered 14 more concrete blocks so we could finish off a couple more of the storage bins in our parking lot.



Our asst. superintendent Tom did most of the heavy lifting with our Case backhoe. Here he is unloading the blocks from the truck.
On Friday, Tom and our mechanic Jim moved the blocks into place. We now how 5 different bins for storage. This will keep us from contaminating different products and help to keep the parking lots a little cleaner.



This past week we also ordered some more compost to use out on the course. We are going to go through the fairways this next week try to get some of the thin areas to fill in. We will aerify, seed and top dress the areas with compost.



- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Overseeding the clubhouse lawns

The last couple of days we've been prepping the two largest lawns at the clubhouse to be over-seeded. These two lawns consist of mostly kikuyu grass that is considered a warm season grass but thrives in our cool season climate. The kikuyu stays pretty green throughout most of the year except when we get frost. We are going to overseed these lawns with rye grass so that during our 3 to 4 month window of possible frost conditions the front and side of the clubhouse will still have an attractive look and green lawns.

The photo above is from Thursday when we were scalping down the kikuyu to prepare a good seed bed. The push mowers were not the greatest idea due to the fact that the kikuyu is a pretty tough grass. We'll come up with a different tactic for next year.
Today the guys finished up the preparations by aerifying the lawns and dragging the plugs. That was followed up by a healthy amount of seed and some starter fertilizer. We will keep this area plenty moist over the next 7-10 days as we wait for the seed to germinate.
This past week we also finished off the back of the clubhouse with a good amount of gorilla hair mulch to keep the weeds down and for a more appealing look until next spring when we will finish planting the ground cover.

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Another one goes down.....

This morning we had a back 9 start so that we could have plenty of time to cut down one of the dead pines between #5 tee and #6 fairway.



These trees have needed to come down for some time but with a short staff and a long dry summer we have put our efforts into maintaining the course.
Now that we have received a little rain we were able to divert some of our staff to getting these trees cut down. Tom took the reins of the project and got everything ready and well organized and by 7:30 the first tree was on the ground and limbs were being chipped. We have scheduled another back 9 start for next Wednesday and with a little luck we should have the other two knocked down and cleaned up.
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A little perk-up

Yesterday the golf course received a little perk-up from two different sources. The first came from a much needed fertilizer application.



With the threat of rain yesterday morning we didn't think we would be able to time our fertilizer application before the rain, but as fate would have it we were able to get out and fertilize wall to wall before any rain.
During our lunchtime the turf got its second perk-up with a much needed 3/10" of rain.



This was the first significant rainfall in about five months.
As we were out mowing and prepping the course this morning you could see the turf standing more upright and already had better color. I'm sure the fertilizer is just starting to kick in but it sure is amazing what a little rain can do on its own!



- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Watering Woes and Poking Holes

Water has and probably will be our biggest challenge from year to year. It has now been over 175 days since we've recorded any significant rainfall in our rain gauge. With nothing in the ten day forecast, watering is still at the forefront of our daily thoughts and decisions. Fortunately the days are getting shorter and the demand for irrigation has dropped off significantly in the last few weeks. Our biggest challenge with irrigation right now has nothing to do the quantity of water we have but the ability to get the water on the course.


The picture above shows a couple of our irrigation clocks that were run in to by a golf cart on Saturday afternoon. As of now, our assistant superintendent Tom was able to get one of them working but the other one is going to take a little bit of work and money to get back online. Our Toro irrigation rep is going to be coming by the course on Wednesday to help us get the right parts ordered and get everything back in working order. At this point we are running all of the irrigation on hole #17 by hand.
Well enough with the watering woes, now it's time to poke some holes. If you've been out playing in the last week you'll notice we went through and sliced all of the fairways with our Aerway slicer.


The Aerway slicer is a pretty non-disruptive aeration process that once mowed over isn't really noticeable. After a break this week we will be back out next week with a 5/8" solid tine on the fairways as well as a 5/8" coring of the tee boxes. Once the tees are finished up we will be coring a bunch of high traffic area throughout the course. Fairways and tees should be finished within the week.
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent