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

Irrigation Adjustments - #10 Right Rough

During the upcoming winter season we are putting a lot of effort into continuing our irrigation adjustments throughout the course. Most of these adjustments will be to eliminate areas that do not need to be irrigated. The first area of attack this year was the right rough of #10 before the pump house.



Our irrigation tech Hung had to move three sprinklers and change out 6 full circle sprinklers to part circles. With these changes we will help to reduce our water usage as well as improve turf quality through better coverage in the fairway. We followed up these adjustments by aerifying, seeding and top-dressing the thin areas in the rough and fairway.


- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Hurricane @ The Pines

No, Hurricane Sandy did not come anywhere close to us here on the west coast and our hearts go out to all those affected by this horrible storm. But if you saw the mess we created between #5 & #6 today, it looked like we had strong winds from a hurricane knock down a couple of trees. Actually it was Tom at it again, knocking the last couple of dead pines down in the rough.



After another back 9 start for the golfers we were able to have a little more time to get most of the mess cleaned up with a little left for tomorrow, depending on the rain in the forecast.
One of the difficulties we had with cutting down these two trees was the location of the two irrigation clocks that were set right between the base of both trees. But again Tom and company were on top of the situation and as you can see from the picture below he came up with a pretty good idea to help protect the clocks. Fortunately he was able to fall the trees away from the clocks and so there weren't any close calls.



Here now is a before and after picture of the 5th hole. This should help open up the right half of the fairway for those playing from the blue tees.







- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Storage Bins and Compost

This last week we ordered 14 more concrete blocks so we could finish off a couple more of the storage bins in our parking lot.



Our asst. superintendent Tom did most of the heavy lifting with our Case backhoe. Here he is unloading the blocks from the truck.
On Friday, Tom and our mechanic Jim moved the blocks into place. We now how 5 different bins for storage. This will keep us from contaminating different products and help to keep the parking lots a little cleaner.



This past week we also ordered some more compost to use out on the course. We are going to go through the fairways this next week try to get some of the thin areas to fill in. We will aerify, seed and top dress the areas with compost.



- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent

Overseeding the clubhouse lawns

The last couple of days we've been prepping the two largest lawns at the clubhouse to be over-seeded. These two lawns consist of mostly kikuyu grass that is considered a warm season grass but thrives in our cool season climate. The kikuyu stays pretty green throughout most of the year except when we get frost. We are going to overseed these lawns with rye grass so that during our 3 to 4 month window of possible frost conditions the front and side of the clubhouse will still have an attractive look and green lawns.

The photo above is from Thursday when we were scalping down the kikuyu to prepare a good seed bed. The push mowers were not the greatest idea due to the fact that the kikuyu is a pretty tough grass. We'll come up with a different tactic for next year.
Today the guys finished up the preparations by aerifying the lawns and dragging the plugs. That was followed up by a healthy amount of seed and some starter fertilizer. We will keep this area plenty moist over the next 7-10 days as we wait for the seed to germinate.
This past week we also finished off the back of the clubhouse with a good amount of gorilla hair mulch to keep the weeds down and for a more appealing look until next spring when we will finish planting the ground cover.

- Posted by Austin Daniells, Golf Course Superintendent