Fert

Trying to beat the rain this afternoon. Fertilizing all the tees and approaches. Trying to give them some extra motivation to grow through some of the spring dead spot and winter kill.

Rough

Aerifing rough today. This takes a while - a week or so to get through the course. Hopefully it will help to get things bumping a little.

Lines in fairways

There are lines in the fairways to mark mowing patterns. We are mowing fairways at a different angle to try and get rid of some of the grain in the fairways. This takes a lot longer to mow but is yielding some good results.

Holes in clean ups

We punched some small areas on the greens this morning. Trying to keep these thinner areas loose and not compacted so the grass can creep over it a little easier. Also did some small had fertilization in these areas.

12

Installing irrigation on 12 along the cart path. We are fixing this area up with some irrigation, sod and Pinestraw to try to improve on the hard pan and dirt that is there now.

Brushing greens

We have the brushes on the mowers this morning. The brushes help to stand the grass up before the mower goes over it. Results are a tighter playing surface.

Bermuda

The green Bermuda really took it on the chin last week with some cold nights. Everything has really turned off color and the Bermuda has really been set back. Hopefully this week will help get things going again.

Bunkers

After 2" of rain the bunkers took a hit with washout. It's enough to make your heart sink with all the labor we have put into them the last 2 weeks. After adjusting sand depths and tamping all slopes, we have been getting awesome results once done.

Winter woes

If you look at the Bermuda on the right side of this picture you can see that the winter took its toll on this grass. Notice that the grass in the swell is green - grass that was protected from all the cold wind coming off the river all winter long. The grass that is on the top of the hills is scorched. I'm not real confident that areas like this are going to come back. We may have a lot of sod to buy this year. Thankfully it seems to be localized to the recently sodded areas - established turf seems to have faired ok.

Bunkers and some guys

It's amazing how much you can get done in 2 weeks once the guys get here. This is a picture of the guys tamping bunkers after going through and getting the faces to a perfect 2" and the bottoms to 4".

In just a week and a half the guys laid an entire tractor trailer of Pinestraw (1640 bales) and have shoveled out about 55 tons of sand out of the bunkers, by hand. The h2b guys work everyday from the day they get here in April till the day they leave in November. We try to give them some days off but they would rather work. You can't find that with any local staff! Some of them have been here 11 years now. They are one of the main reasons that we can maintain the course at the level we do within our current budget. Most of the guys can do just about any job on the course and you have zero training or turnover costs.

We are gaining on completing all of the bunker tweaking and tamping.
They are really good after we finish, just pray they don't wash out.

Winter issues

Below are two pics of the Bermuda in fairways. One is the approach line - white turf is sod put down after the renovation and the green turf is established, healthy 419 that has been there a while.

The second pic is the low area on 15 that had stayed saturated for so long.

We have quite a few areas out there that are still wait and see. I haven't seen any mature grass that got hit by the winter, but some of the sod that has been put down in the past year has really not done well.

Greens speeds

Greens are starting to pick up speed. We have mowed and rolled the last two days along with dropping the height of cut a little bit.

It also helps that the growth regulator has started kicking in. We had to wait until the aeration holes were close to filled before getting to aggressive.

The greens could really use a brush and verticut. We are going to have to wait until next week to do this. The sand needs to be completely below the surface so you don't bring up all the sand, make a mess, and destroy any good cutting units that we have.

Hints of life

The course is starting to show some life. The range tees and the target greens are really greening up. This is probably from the compost we topdressed with in these areas. The compost helps to heat up these areas and give them a head start.