Week of October 10th - Leaf season is here and a soaking rain
- matthewbehl
- Oct 14, 2022
- 2 min read
When it come to golf course maintenance fall cleanup is one of our most dreaded tasks. It consumes a lot of time and labor that I would rather use for agronomic practices or improvement projects on the golf course. The team views it as a heartless unrewarding task, many times cleaning an entire hole only to come back an hour later and have it look like nothing was done. It is especially labor intensive when we are still actively mowing. Play surfaces need to be cleaned before mowing can occur. Many days the cleaning/mowing process encompasses the entire staff.
The club's new Tri-Flex green mower arrived. It had its first full mow of the golf course this past Thursday. Without going into too much detail this will be a huge improvement to the conditioning of the greens. In simple terms, our current greens mower is a 2008 model. Picture the difference in automobiles from 2008 to 2022; many of the same technology advancements apply to turf equipment as well. Benefits will be seen this season, but will really show next season.
We have entered the final stages of drought recovery on fairways. While we are still seeding, we have moved onto topdressing fairways and sodding remaining thin spots/drainage trenches. We should be able to persuade another two weeks of growth out of our fairways and this will put the fairways in very good position going into winter.
Below is a gallery highlighting some of the sod work
With the forecast for rain, 2nd assistant Michael Curtin went out and topdressed greens prior to the storm. Using rain to push the sand into the canopy is a very effective way to topdress greens. Using rainfall to wash sand into canopy isn't something we have been able to do much of this season with the long summer of prolonged drought.
As of 2:00 PM Friday we have received 2.66 inches of rain. This rain should end our irrigation needs for the season except for some seed or sod areas. The rain will help with the replenishment of the irrigation pond before winter sets in. It was also the first real test of the repaired drainage exit on the fairway bunker on 18. I was happy to see a dry bunker and water flowing freely from the exit. While the rain was beneficial, it has limited work for today and has scattered debris across the course. With a 9:30 shotgun Saturday we are going to be limited for time. We will need multiple days to clean the course completely, not just a few hours. My entire staff is in Saturday. As always, we will do everything we can to provide the best playing conditions possible.
Other work completed this week:
Foliar fertilizer application to all seed areas
Soil amendments to seed areas
Greens spot sprayed for silver thread moss
Some pictures from the week:
