July 26th Update - Dry Conditions Persist
- matthewbehl
- Jul 26, 2024
- 3 min read
As I write this week's blog it looks like we will end July with .6 inches of rain on the golf course for the month. This low rainfall amount and a very well below average June leaves our current water supply very low. It has been frustrating watching storm after storm work around the golf course. Prior staff and current staff warned me and had coined the phrase the "Ipswich Split" to describe how rainfall works around the club. I am now a firm believer in this "Ipswich Split". I have just seen it happen too many times now.
With the low water supply, the decision was made late last week to shut off all rough irrigation. Only a few critical heads in the rough are currently running. This is being done in an effort to conserve water and put all of our precious and limited water supply towards short cut turf.
Fairways are being irrigated, but at a very low capacity. What this means is we may lose .15 inches of water from the soil in the course of the day in evaporation and plant use. The ideal situation is to replenish the .15 that is lost. We will only be replenishing .05 to .08 inches of water depending on area.
Most likely next week we will start to pump water from the pond on the 6th green up into the pond at the beginning of the 6th fairway. Once the pond is full at the beginning of the 6th fairway we will start to pump this over into our irrigation pond on 5.
If possible as areas in the rough brown out and go dormant it would be a big help if the membership could avoid taking carts through these areas. This will prevent tire tracking from occurring and speed up recovery once rainfall resumes and we can start supplementing these areas with irrigation again.
Projects on 1 and 13 are currently on hold. We will be doing some sod work to these areas as soon as our water supply allows. As of now all projects are on hold and all focus is on maintenance of the golf course.
Also please utilize the exit stakes on the golf course. Cart traffic adds to drought stress and we utilize the exit stakes to minimize this stress. If carts are not exiting before the exit stakes it will most likely lead to more of a recovery effort when growing conditions improve.
On the practice green, please only putt to the pin locations provided. The upper tier by the cart path is being utilized at all times even when the pins are not located there. The amount of wear in this area is tremendous. This wear has not allowed us to put pins on this level and we now very rarely use the upper tier. Due to the constant use of the upper tier we are putting 3 times the labor and resources into the practice green as any other green on the golf course.
Flower additions at the front entrance of the club house:
Shae and I recently pooled some of our resources and did some additional planting at the front entrance to the clubhouse. These new planters will mirror the urns at the front of the clubhouse with fall, Holiday, and spring displays. They are currently set up to the summer display which will remain until sometime in October.
Some pictures and videos from the past week:
Video of Bobcat and Egret arguing over hunting grounds