In my last post I stated that we were starting to wind down on our projects but this past week we kept moving along with a few more in our "spring scramble."
The first project we finished actually started with a generous donation from a local course. As they were starting their aerification they had about 5 large pallets of sod that they couldn't use from a turf reduction project. With some quick thinking and an awesome staff we were able to go pick up the sod and get it laid on a temporary site before we could prep an area that really needed the sod.
The big question then became where would we lay this sod? We chose to prep an area to the left of #3 green.
This area has plagued us from day one. Poor drainage, poor soil and the lack of sun in the spring and fall is a bad combination for turf. We had added drainage a couple years ago and added another sprinkler this past year. Now it was time to remove the poorly performing turf.
Once the old turf was removed we came in and core aerified the entire area and then put down a generous amount of gypsum and starter fertilizer. Next we laid the new sod in its new home and gave it a little over a week to send out its new roots before mowing. Here's a picture of the final product.
This area will still be "ground under repair" for another week but then should be a major improvement to this hole.
Another project that was finished up last week was the addition of some new pop-up sprinklers along the left side of #9 green. This was another area that has bugged us from day one since the slope is pretty severe and is also very close to our bordering fence. The spacing of the existing large turf sprinklers never really provided the coverage we needed and so we had to spend a lot of our time hand watering to keep things alive.
We started by trenching in a 1" pipe that was connected up to a 1" valve we had installed during a previous project when we had moved 3 sprinklers behind the green. Then at 15' spacing we installed some pop-up rotary sprinklers that we've used on other projects and really liked as they don't seem to mist as much as the spray type pop-ups.
Even with both of those projects going on last week, the team pulled together and edged all of the bunkers throuhgout the course. Here's a picture of their hard work on #14 green side bunker.
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent
