Reel to Reel

It was a busy and productive month.  Here are some of my favorite shots.

The leaves are falling this week as fast as we can blow and mulch them.  We pride ourselves on keeping the course clean and playable during the fall.  We do not win the leaf battle every day, but we give it our all on a daily basis. Rich mulching in #7 rough Victor muching in #10 rough Mike blowing in #4 rough Reminder: We will blowing out the irrigation system next Monday and Tuesday.  The bathrooms on the golf course will be winterized as well, and closed for the season.

Over the last four days soil conditions on the driving range have dried out significantly.  By staying late yesterday we were able to complete the finish grade and seed the new fairway. finish grade almost complete This morning we were able to sod around 3 of the new bunker banks before the heavy rains occurred.   sodding around one of the new bunkers We still have one more bunker to build and several areas to clean up, but it will have to wait until conditions dry out.   

Our winter preparations continued today with our late fall deep-tine aerification of the greens.  The greens were aerified with 1/2" solid tines at a depth of 10".  Over the years we have had good success with this practice in improving infiltration of excess water after snowmelt. Mike deep-tining #2 green In addition to the deep-tine aerification today, we also worked on improving the surface drainage on #5 green.  Much of our winter damage this year was caused by snowmelt refreezing and not having enough time to get off the green.  By regrading the bank, excess water should move off the green at a quicker rate and hopefully minimize any refreezing.  green bank on #5 regraded to help move off surface water sodded and ready to go

Rain showers mid-week created soft conditions and halted our work on the driving range landing area.  On Thursday and Friday we shifted our efforts towards two small drainage projects on holes #8 and #9.  On #8, we added a drainage line in front of the green.  On #9, we added a line on the east side of the fairway.  Both of the new drainage lines will rectify these wet areas. digging trench for the new line on #8 new line being installed on #8 fairway new line installed on east side of #9 fairway a few more pieces of sod to go

The greens have responded nicely to the fertility and maintenance regimen they've received this fall.  I've seen a nice increase in bentgrass plants, as well as improved greens color, density, and rooting.  All of these factors will help the plants store more carbohydrate reserves. These reserves are very important in helping the plants winter hardiness. 12" roots coming out the bottom of the cup cutter Certainly, there are no guarantees how the plants will endure the winter weather, but I feel good about where the greens are now and heading into winter.  Mother Nature did a good job this winter of selecting out the weak poa plants.  Although it was tough to see that much dead grass, in the end we came out stronger because of the amount of new bentgrass that we now have.  These plants are significantly more winter hardy than the poa plants that died this past winter. Below are a few photos of greens 5, 10 and 17, whic...

We installed over 250 feet of new drainage this week on the driving range landing area.  Our focus was in front of the tee, where we ran a new drainage line from east to west.  We targeted this area first as it is one of the softest spots on the landing area.  The new line has not stopped running since we installed it Thursday afternoon.  This should help dry out the area significantly. Myles digging out the drainage trench in front of the tee Jr. cleaning out the trench Brendan spreading out pea stone new drainage line is installed and back filled with pea stone Yesterday we started removing the dead sod from the new fairway.  Next week we will begin shaping and smoothing out the area. removing dead sod from the new fairway a good day's work

It has been one week since seeding and the driving range tee is progressing nicely.  The new seedlings started to emerge 4 days after seeding, and the tee has a pretty nice tinge of green. new seedlings on driving range tee starting to look like a tee On the landing area this week, we focused our attention on shaping the new bunkers and lowering existing catch basins to improve drainage. Myles lowering a catch basin new bunker on the northwest corner of the range - 215 yards from the tee