Wrapping up some more projects

As the days become longer and the temperature starts to warm up our opportunity to complete projects throughout the week become slimmer as we shift our attention to more mowing, watering and general maintenance. Here's a recap of a few projects we've completed in the last few weeks.
First off was the completion of the cart path curves at #1 & #9 greens. We have struggled to keep the grass growing in both of these areas due to golf cart wear. We came up with the idea to add a few of the 4-6" rocks as kind of speed bumps in some DG to discourage the golfers from cutting the corners. Here's a picture of Tom and Scott setting up the project followed by the finished look at #9 green.









The next project we wrapped up was an area left of #2 fairway where we sprayed round-up and adjusted some sprinklers so we were not watering this area. We then spread some wood chips to finish off the look you see in the second picture.






The next project was actually a set of on-gowing projects where we were again moving sprinkler heads to better utilize our water and create more uniform spacing between sprinklers. A few of these sprinklers were also changed from a full circle to a part-circle to reduce the areas we are watering. The first area we worked on were two sprinklers to the left of #5 fairway. Both sprinklers were moved about 30 feet and repositioned to have better spacing and coverage.









The next area was behind #9 green where we moved three sprinklers and added a 1" valve for a future project.









The last project of note is the addition of some new posts and cable along the cart path at #16 blue tee. Jose planned, set up and finished the entire project on his own. Great job Jose!






- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

A little vertical trim

The last couple days the turf team has been hard at work with more of our spring maintenance practices. Due to the aggressive nature of our T-1 bentgrass we occasionally need to deep verti-cut the turf to help remove some thatch and smooth the surface. The T-1 reminds me a little bit of some of the bermuda greens we had when I was in San Diego. It really seems to handle some pretty aggressive grooming and tends to bounce back very nicely.
The first process we started out with is what we call a deep verti-cut. We use our carbide tipped verti-cutters that are mounted on one of our greens mowers. Here's an up close picture of the blades.




The greens are only verti-cut in one direction as not to thin them out too much. Here's a couple pictures of what a green looks like afterwards and also a picture of one of our utility vehicles filled with the grass and thatch from only one green.









Following the verti-cutter is our turbine blower that is used to disperse the clippings and try to blow them off the greens. Following the blower is our greensmower to mow the greens and pick up any left over debris.



The front 9 greens were verti-cut on Monday and we finished the back 9 up on Tuesday. On Tuesday we also top dressed the greens with a pretty good amount of sand to fill in any inconsistencies and help to dilute the thatch layer. Here's a pictures of that process as well as the cocoa mat following up to move the sand into the turf.






One of the last of our processes today was our first application this year of the wetting agent Revolution at the 6oz./1000 rate and 3 minutes of water. After a little discussion our assistant superintendent Tom got back out on the course and did a quick top dressing of the collars.






The greens will get around 50 minutes of water tonight to help work the sand into the grass canopy as well as work the Revolution down into the sand profile so it can go to work.
Even after all that work and sand, I took a few putts on the putting green this afternoon and they were still rolling very good. With our watering tonight and the chance of rain on Thursday, the sand should be pretty well worked in by the weekend. The greens will be rolled the next two days before we start to mow them again on Friday.
Another big Thank You to the rest of the guys that make up this awesome turf team. They really have been working hard to make these conditions you see in the pictures below.












- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Springtime fun on the course

Ok, aerification for most might not seem like a fun time, but we do our best to have a good time while we're out aerifying the course. The past couple of weeks we've been hard at work aerifying fairways, tees, green banks, collars and approaches. With a tweak here and a couple broken down pieces of equipment there, most of the aerification so far has been smooth sailing. The last part of our spring aerification is to finish up the rough and a few high wear areas around greens and tees. Greens will not be aerified until the day after Memorial Day.









All areas were aerified with 5/8" coring tines except for green banks which were punched with 5/8" solid times. For the fairways, the cores were dragged with a metal drag to break up the plugs and then blown off with our turbine blower.





The plugs from the tees and collars were picked up with our core harvester.






There's also a lot of clean-up with aerification. From back pack blowers to shovels and washing areas off with hoses.



Following the aerification of the second fairway we followed up with a top dressing of compost and then drug in again with a metal drag mat.






The next couple of weeks we will be putting the finishing touches to the course aerification and getting ourselves ready for the summer months. Lets hope for some more rain before we get to June!
- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

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