Thursday, December 20, 2012

Water on my head and water on the brain



#12 fairway with puddles
     After what seemed like a never ending summer watering season it sure has been nice to get a decent amount of rain in the last couple of months. We are now going on our 8th straight week without watering the golf course for the purpose of supplying moisture for the turf. This is by far the longest stretch we've gone in the last couple years. Even though we have had some really nice rain storms over the last couple months we have not forgotten what this last summer was like thus we have "water on the brain."
     Part of our winter projects to continue making changes to the irrigation system to better utilize the water we do have during the summer. With these changes to the irrigation system we are also trying to reduce the amount of irrigated turf in some areas.
     The most recent area we made changes to was around #2 tee. The spacing was changed from 70' spacing down to 60-65' spacing and changed to more of a triangular set up as opposed to the square spacing that was originally installed. We did have to add one sprinkler to make the triangular spacing work, but we also converted all of the sprinklers to part circles sprinklers (most at 180*) to conserve on water. Here's Hung checking his adjustments of the part circles he just installed.
Hung's the man!
     The next area we are working on is #11 tee. We have always struggled here because the spacing was installed a little too far apart. We are also taking this chance to eliminate throwing any water to the right of the tees in the bowl that separates #11 & #14 tees. Here's Hung starting with the first sprinkler to be moved behind #11 tee and #16 green.
Always staying busy
     What's next you ask? We do have a list of the worst areas and are planning to get through 4-5 areas before April of next year. At this point it looks like after we finish up #11 tee we are going to make a few changes at #15 tees and then on to #7 tees. Stay tuned to the blog as we will continue to post on our progress as we move through the course making these changes.
Another beautiful winter day on the Monterey peninsula!
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent