Up and running!

About 5 months ago we had the unfortunate circumstance with two of our irrigation clocks being run over by a golf cart. We hope that it was not done on purpose but none the less we needed to get them fixed.



Fast forward to today and we now have both clocks up and running. After getting some help with the first one from our local Toro rep, our assistant Tom took on the second one and got it all hooked back up and operating like normal.






The last step will be to install four bollards around the clocks to hopefully prevent this from happening again.




- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A needle here and a needle there

Today we were up early and at the course at 4am so we could get going with a top dressing and a needle tine on the greens. Yes, I did say 4am and yes sometimes we do start that early so we can do as much of our work ahead of the morning play. With the time change that gave us a 3.5 hour head start. With only one greens aerifier and roughly 4 acres of greens we were just about finished by our lunch time @ 10:30.
This process combines a couple very important cultural practices that are necessary to keep our greens healthy. First, the top dressing helps to dilute the thatch layer in the turf as well as fill in any inconsistencies in the green for a smoother roll. Second, the 8mm needle tine helps to break the surface tension of the bent grass and also provide oxygen down to the roots as we begin to enter into our spring growing season. The more roots we can grow now, the better off we will be in the summer.
Here's a couple of pictures of the process this morning.












The top dressing and needle tine were followed up by a cocoa mat and our greens roller. With a heavy dose of water at night, greens should be healed up by the weekend.

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Busy week on the course

Truly there aren't too many weeks on our course where the maintenance staff isn't busy working hard on new projects or prepping the course for daily play. This past week was no different as we were busy doing a bunch of little projects and finishing up some projects from last week. We started out the week with some pretty cool temps but had very little frost due to the humidity in the air. No frost meant that we could get the course ready earlier and on to our projects.
Early in the week we were busy doing a little solid tine aerification in some areas where we needed to reseed due to wear from the winter golfers. We followed up with some seed and a covering of compost. Here's Jake out on #7.




Another job we were able to finish up this week was the grinding of a couple stumps from two dead Oak trees we cut down last week. Here's our assistant superintendent Tom on the stump grinder attacking a wide stump on the right of #9.




This week we also put the finishing touches on most of our sump drains that are along side our cart paths. Scott was hard at work looking for the right rock combinations to fit into these areas. We are covering the 3/4" drain rocks with the larger 4-6" rocks to help keep the drains open as well as eliminate the amount of gravel that gets blown around when we're blowing off cart paths. Here's a couple pics of the handy work.








On Thursday we were on to another project between #10 & #18 rough. This entailed transplanting some cypress trees we found growing in some wood chips to the right of #2 tee. Enrique carefully dug up 6 of the smaller trees and planted them into their new home between 10 & 18. Our plan here is to continue transplanting a few more to eventually fill this area and separate the holes even more. Once we get the rest of our trees planted we will begin working on spreading some wood chips around the entire area.




Thursday also was the start of another project along side the cart path at #16 Blue tee. Jose was busy at work putting in new posts and cable to eliminate another section of rope line and stakes. So far he was able to get the posts in and a little bit of concrete around three of them for stability. This next week he should be wrapping up this project up by installing the cable. Final step would be to spray some round-up underneath so we don't have to mow too close.




To finish our busy week off we had a nice full field shotgun on Friday. With a little earlier start the guys were able to get everything prepped with no problems. All their hard worked is paying off providing some amazing conditions as you can see below.




As the tournament went out on the course we were hard at work for a couple of hours on the driving range. We were trying to address a few of the thin areas and a couple areas that needed a little drainage. The range has some of the worst draining soil on the entire course. A full aerification of the entire range will happen on April 1st.
With all hands on the range we were able to accomplish quite a bit in a short time. Here's some pics of some of the things that happened on the range.







Here's Tommy spreading compost over the seeded areas to help keep the seed moist and hold in a little warmth.











The range work was finished off with Jose doing a little spring trimming on the plants by the range building.




All in all, another great week with a very talented and amazing staff. This golf course wouldn't be what it is without their dedication and hard work!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Irrigation improvements to #7 tee box

As or winter projects season continues we have focused our latest efforts on #7 tee box. The irrigation that was installed on this teeing area 4 years ago was inadequate and caused us to have to run supplemental irrigation throughout the summer to keep the grass alive.
With an irrigation clock close by and 3 empty stations inside the clock we have added 3 new part circle sprinklers along the right side of the cart path. We also moved the other 8 sprinklers on and around the tee box to maximize the coverage, while also converting 5 of those sprinklers from full circle to part circles (roughly 180 degree) . This will hopefully eliminate the need to hand water or supply supplemental sprinklers when the summer season comes along. The pictures below are of our irrigation tech Hung and his relentless hard work during this project.









- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

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

The kids are coming!

This coming weekend we are hosting the U.S. Kids "Monterey Challenge." Between our course and Del Monte golf course there are over 200 kids from age 6 to 15. Depending on the age range, some play all 18 holes and the younger ones just 9 holes.



This is the second year of the Monterey Challenge and seems to be a hit as the number of participants has increased by 40 players over last year. Hopefully the rain will stay away and give the kids a couple good days to play their best. Good luck to all the participants!
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A little off color

For the past couple of weeks we have been out spraying for Kikuyu grass throughout the course. Kikuyu is a warm season grass that actually does pretty well in our cooler climate on the Monterey peninsula but in our case we treat it as a weed. Since Kikuyu is a warm season grass it starts to shut down its growth patterns as the soil temperatures start to drop in the winter. This makes for an excellent time to spray herbicides to knock it back as the plant will translocate the herbicide down to its roots as it tries to store it's energy in the root system for the next growing season. Below is a picture of some Kikuyu that was sprayed last week along the lake bank in front of #10 green. For the most part the tees and fairways are pretty free of Kikuyu so we've put a little more effort this year into eradicating it from our rough.



In this picture you also see that the lakes are still a little on the low side. Hopefully we get a good rain soon to help fill both lakes up!

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent