Why All The White Lines???

If you have played our course in the last few weeks or you have probably seen a bunch of white lines painted on the turf. No, these are not out-of-bounds markings. If you look carefully these are dashed white lines which are either new mowing lines for different heights of cut or they are reminder lines for the different mowers.
Throughout this past winter Tom and I made a conscious effort to look at the different mowing lines throughout the course to see where we could make some needed adjustments. One of the areas we have really concentrated on were the areas that are mowed with our banks or surrounds mower. The reason for this was to try to limit the amount of turf we mow with this machine because it is a reel type mower and takes a beating throughout the year. It is also the only mower we have to mow the banks. So with a little less area to mow maybe we can keep this machine for a little longer than expected. The areas that were mowed by the banks mower will now be mowed by the rough mowers. These machines are also a little wider than the banks mower so the extra turf to mow should not increase our mowing time on the rough mowers.

#8 collar on the right side of the green.







Area between the putting green and the 18th green.

More Cocoa Please!

     What you see in the picture above is our newer coca mat being pulled by a John Deere Gator on our 17th green. One of my first purchases almost three years ago was a cocoa mat. The cocoa mat is primarily used to brush in our top-dressing sand. Well, the original cocoa mat had finally reached its useful life so we recently acquired a new one and this morning we took it out to use it as a pre-brush before the greens mower. This is something Tom and I have been discussing for a while so we decided to give a try this morning. The idea being that it would help stand up the turf before the greens were mowed. Our final consensus was that it was a good idea and did seem to increase the amount of clippings in the baskets in comparison to our previous couple of mowing's which should result in a smoother surface.

Green Circles



     If you've played the course in the last week or so you have probably noticed green circles around the trees and wondered what are they doing? Well, we are in the process of spraying all of our tree wells with a pre-emergent herbicide and glyphosate (round-up) to eliminate all established weeds/grasses and any winter weeds that could germinate. This is another way we cut down on our winter weed-eating which allows us to put our efforts towards other important irrigation, drainage or tree trimming duties that need to get accomplished this winter season.