Monday Monday Monday

Wow!!! I have been so busy since my last post I'll hit the highlights. 

Picture of the morning sky while raking bunkers at Harbor Town for the Heritage. I raked bunkers in the morning and mowed fairways in the evening. Interisting fact about maintaining a golf course for a PGA tour event..... 42 maintenance staff for the week combining to work a total of 3200 hours. If you conservatively and I do mean conservatively assume each person was paid $10/hr not counting any overtime that is a maintenance cost if $32,000.00 for one week.  Wow!!!!!  I don't know about you but that's one heck of a chunk of change to me. 

Got back to my golf course to find everything looking pretty good. I was  there throughout the week of the heritage but didn't arrive til after players were out and as busy as we are it is challenging to look at everything while play is steady. 

With the weather warming up our use of the irrigation system is becoming more frequent. As with anything that sits relatively inactive for a prolonged period of time there will be issues with performance once you resume use on a regular basis. Above is an example of such an issue.  

As you can see the irrigation head was positioned on the edge of a lagoon. It was also a dead end instead of a loop. So,when we had to pressure our system up after our pumpstation went down TGE pressure blew the cap off the pipe and displaced the concrete thrust block put in place to prevent this from happening. 

Instead of fixing the problem where it occurred I chose to move the head away from the edge of the lagoon about 15 feet. This allowed me to install a new thrust block behind the cap which will better hold its place and prevent this from happening again in the future. 

We have also begun to slowly transition our winter overseed by applying extremely low rates of a selective herbicide (revolver) to our greens, tees and fairways. We started with 1/4 oz/acre on greens and 1/2 oz/acre on tees and fairways. To date we have made two applications at the rates listed above. The purpose is to only slow the growth of our cool season turf down enough to allow our warm season turf to take over. 

After an interisting weekend with our pumpstation malfunctioning three nights in a row when our temps reached 80 degrees and the wind blowing a steady 15 to 20 mph. We had a action packed Monday in the golf maintenance department. 

We mowed all our short grass including the driving range, our primary rough, intermediates and out of play areas.  

Starting after lunch we mowed greens again with the groomers set down 1/16" and mowed up and down the same pass (double cut).  Then we topdressed using dry 65 sand applied with rotary spreaders one direction.  We followed that with a brush so that we worked the sand down into the canopy of the turf. 

 

This process serves multiple purposes.  It helps increase speed and firmness of the putting surface, slows down the build up of thatch, helps with water and air movement and helps keep excess moisture from building near the turf surface just to name a few. 

We will likely begin increasing our frequency of top dressing as the weather continues to warm and our grass begins to take off. 

Spring is Here!!!

The azaleas started two weeks ago and are almost done now. Spring is definitely in the air in coastal South Carolina. It is a welcomed change.  

With spring here everything on the course is emerging out of dormancy and we are staying busy mowing rough for the first time, pruning all our love grass and adding pine straw, doing a little aerifying in weak areas in fairways and applying fertilizer to high traffic areas to give them a jump start.

Mowing rough the first time 2 weeks ago. 

Looking across the seventh fairway you can see the love grass has received its annual pruning and we are adding straw between the plants to increase the aesthetic value of the hole and also aid in weed control.

Aerifying weak areas in fairways. These areas tend to become extremely hydrophobic during late winter and early spring. We aerify in order to remove thatch and also create a channel for water to penetrate into the soil. We follow this process by watering these areas with a hose and applying a product that aids in water infiltration and retention.