Nutrients

Here is a picture of granular nutrients going down after aeration. Having holes in the greens allows for an easy way to get nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, and calcium into the root zone for plant availability.

Sand based greens (USGA spec) don't hold nutrients very long and you must replenish these elements on a regular basis to keep the plant healthy.

Aeration

Here is a picture of the aerator punching greens. Aeration is a necessary management practice to keep greens alive and healthy throughout the year.

Deep tining greens

Here is a picture of the Vertidrain punching deep tine aeration holes in the greens before the regular aerator goes over greens. This helps the grass develop long root systems and allows root regeneration after a summer of root loss. We do this in October because they are still too weak during the August aeration to have this machine on the greens.

New Drains

We are working on replacing some of the old concrete drains that are cracking and falling apart. They are being replaced with plastic basins that are set in concrete. We just have to tie in the existing outfalls into the casing. This should give the drains a neater look, and eliminates the danger of damaging mowers due to unstable drain tops. Right now we are working on #12 and #17. After these are finished we continue on others around the course.

Greens

All of the weak greens are recovering nicely and we are seeing a lot of seed germination from all of the seeding we have been doing. These greens were aerated and fertilized last week - reason they look a little more lush than the others.

The rest of the greens will be aerated next week and fertilized at this same rate. It is best to have holes in the greens when applying this fall fertilizer. We will lightly topdress all the greens next week after they are punched.

I am happy with the overall condition of the greens after this difficult summer, and they are rolling at a speed that we will try to maintain until the amigos leave for the year.

New pump controls

Here is a picture of the touchscreen computer that controls pump operation. This new pump station should help us really save on utility costs, decrease on water usage, and help elongate the life of our irrigation system.

New Pumps

Here is a pic of the new pump skid being installed with the crane.

Pumps

Here's the picture of the old pumps that came out of the pump station.

Pump station

Old pumps coming out of the pump house.

Irrigation pipe

Here is a picture of the inside of one of the pipes that was removed from the pump station. You can see a ton of corrosion on the inside of the pipe. Most of the road crossings on the course are this type of pipe and have this amount of deterioration.

Greens

We aerated #5,6,9,11,13,14,15 on Monday. These are some of our weak greens that we've had some difficulty developing new root growth because of all the wet weather we had 2-3 weeks ago. The holes with allow oxygen and nutrients to be available to generate new root growth.

These greens have been re-seeded to help some of the spots that still are bare.

Greens for club championship.

The greens are stimping 11 today. The greens are much faster than they have been all year. This is due to some much needed dry weather, making the greens firm and fast.

The greens height of cut has actually come up .025" since member-guest. This would normally slow the greens down but that just shows how wet they've been the last few weeks. Cutting height actually went higher and the greens still got faster. The dry weather has allowed us to apply all the wetting agents, growth regulators, and nutrients needed without adding to the wet problem when watering in these products.

My goal is to have the greens rolling around 9.5-10 through the remainder of the fall.

Course conditions

The course still has some wet areas like this one on 8 fairway, but the rest of the course is starting to dry out a little.

Fairways were mown last week a little higher than normal because they were so long (unable to mow due to wet areas). We are moving them back down this week to regular height.

Rain

Another 0.6" of rain last night. Carts will still be on the cart paths now and it will be a couple more says until we're able to mow most of the fairways.

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