Rain

We have received 1.5 inches of rain last night and more coming today.  We are restricting  carts to paths for the next day or two.

Spring has Sprung

What a difference a week has made.  Look at pictures below of #1 fairway.  Fairway has completely green up in less than a week.  We will be mowing fairways this week.

 Photo taken 4/22/14

Photo taken 4/28/14

Fairy Ring

We applied our first Fairy Ring control on Wednesday 4/16/14.  Fairy Ring does not show itself until late spring early summer but fungicide applications have to be done in spring to prevent and outbreak in summer.  Severe outbreaks can cause serious turf loss.  We have been battling this disease for years.  With the help of Dr. Lee Miller from University of Missouri we now have a handle on the disease.  We will make another application in 4 weeks.

 Fairy Ring  you can have multiple rings.  Turf is killed in brown ring.

 Dan applying fungicide to # 18 Green

Greens have to be watered in with .10 inch after fungicide application.

Irrigation upgrade

Finally after a very long winter we sodded our trenches from irrigation upgrade on holes 14 and 17.  We used zoysia sod from our nursery. Using our own sod saved us $600.  The only thing left to do is run control wires to irrigation boxes and the project will be completed.  I hope to get the wires installed next week.  This upgrade has taken  2 years to complete. 

 

 Cutting out sod over trench

 Cleaning up left over soil

 Laying Zoysia Sod

 Finished

 Cutting Zoysia Sod from our nursery

Mowing Collars

We mowed our Collars for the first time in 2014.  Collar height is 3/8"

Green Aerification

We just completed our green aerification.  I would like to thank my staff for a job well done.  We were short handed and still finished the job in 2 days.  Greens will be bumpy for about 1 week until bentgrass fills in holes. We will continue to brush greens throughout the next week.  We will not mow greens for 5 days to allow greens to grow through the sand topdressing we applied.  We are expecting rain for the next 3 days, this is perfect to help settle sand into green canopy and aeration holes.  I know a lot of members do not like it when we aerate but it is a necessary cultural practice.  Greens will recover quickly and be better than they were before we aerated. The following pictures are a recap of our aeration process.

 Green are aerated with our Toro 648 Procore with 1/2 inch tines.  We can aerate all 19 greens in 8 hours.

 

 After greens are aerated we clean green off and remove cores. 

 

 Greens are blown off to remove all excess debris.

 

 Next we topdress greens.  We use 40 tons of sand.

 

 

 After topdressing we brush sand into holes.

 

We apply soil conditioner and fertilizer and water in.  Aerification is complete.