Spring Project Recap

It's already the second week in June and looking back, the month of May practically flew by despite it being one of the longest months of the year.  During May the staff was very busy with some projects that will have a huge impact on the long-term aesthetics and playability of the golf course and I wanted to take a moment to do a quick recap of these projects.

#1:  Drainage Project on the 18th hole.  

The installation of 4,000 linear feet of 4" perforated drain pipe on this hole is now complete.  We were able to tackle the most saturated areas, mainly at the interface of the fairways and rough and the bottom portion of the fairway.  With the change in the weather, the course has dried out and will stay that way as we head into the summer months.  The immediate benefits will be most noticeable this winter when the rainy season returns.  Our ultimate goal with any drainage project is to improve the playing conditions during the shoulder seasons when the weather bounces back and forth between wet and dry weather cycles.  We are very pleased to say that we have installed over a mile of drainage since January 2014 (6,000 linear feet).  This is the most drainage we have ever been able to install in one year since the construction of the golf course.  

Miles re-installing the sod on top of a newly-filled drain line.

Installing pipe.

Another huge boulder uncovered.  Too many to count were found!

The weather finally dried out a bit in May, providing better working conditions in
contrast to what we experienced in late April.

#2 Brush Clearing on the left of the 15th hole

As I outlined in a previous post, the canyon on the left side of #15 had become extremely overgrown over the years.  To remedy this, we brought in goats to graze on whatever they could reach and finished by having a logger come in and cut down the remaining sapling trees and bushes.  The result unveiled a nice clean cliff edge that improved sight lines from the tee and fairway and added another dimension to the psychological effect of how one may choose to play this hole. 

Finished Product on #15.

#3 Removal of Pasture-Type grasses on Bunker Faces

Last Spring, I outlined a herbicide application process that we were experimenting with on our bunker faces in an attempt to remove some of the weedy pasture type of grasses.  This grass is coarsely textured and a lighter green color in comparison to the finer textured grasses around it, making it stand out like a sore thumb.  The process worked so well last Spring that we decided to do a full-scale treatment on all of our bunker faces and the results are now beginning to take full effect with many of these patches melting out of the stand.  You can read more detail on the process in my blog post from last Spring here.

The off-color white spots are the areas that we applied Tenacity.

The herbicide works by bleaching-out the chlorophyll in the plant which
makes the plant unable to use the sunlight's energy to sustain itself leading
to death.

#4  Deep-Tine Aerification of Fairways

 Maybe some of you have seen this orange machine behind our tractor zooming around our fairways recently.  Let me introduce you to one of the newest additions to our equipment fleet, the Wiedenmann Terra Spike XF.  This machine is essentially an aeration machine that unlike our old one, has the ability to remove compaction up to 8.5 inches and "kick" the soil, creating a pocket of up to 1 inch below the surface.  Using this machine to break up compaction at a deeper depth than ever before (5+ inches more) will lead to better root growth, help the turf make better use of water and nutrients, improve the flow of water and balance of air.  These benefits will lead to overall better turf conditions year round including shoulder-season drainage.  We plan to use this machine often as the benefits are so great and the impact on play is so little.  The holes that are made by the machine have no affect on how the ball rolls on the fairways and the holes close up quickly.  

#15 Fairway being deep-tined

The after-result.  These holes were healed-over in a matter of days.

These are the tines used on the machine, allowing us to penetrate the hard-pan below
our fairways which will be one of the tools we use to improve course drainage over
the next few years.

The tines are mounted two per block for a total of twelve tines.  We have to change-out
the tines an average of every three fairways aerified because the sand cap is so
coarse, wearing down our tines quickly.