EARTH DAY 2011

wild turkey that live on # 2  #18

On this Earth Day; I thought it might be great to look at residences of the golf course that the crew and myself appreciate seeing everyday.

Blue birds that use are thirty houses

Red Shoulder hawk at range pole

One of many pairs of mallards on the lakes

Some of the young watching flower beds being planted

And the newest resident at # 5 along the river

GREENS AERATION IS TUESDAY APRIL 26th

We will be aerating the greens,this coming Tuesday April 26th using 1/2" tines and topdressing. We are doing the practices greens on Monday after 11:00 to get all the kinks out the machines and make sure the new guys understand how the process will go. Check out the video link regarding the need for aeration and how the process takes place.  Look later next week on the blog for pictures of the aeration day, and how the greens are recovering from aeration.    why we aerify greens video

MAINTENANCE UPDATE



creek # 4 cleaned



What a whirlwind the last few weeks have been, since the last post. We have been busy on the golf course and other areas. The weather has been up and down with temperatures, the wind has been tough to deal with in spraying operations. Here are some of the things that we have been getting accomplished: The greens are starting to grow with warmer soil temperatures, so winter cups are gone. We have sodded some areas that had not healed from last fall. The light verti-cutting and topdressing process has started to smooth them  out. We are skipping verti -cutting on putting green, #1, #2, #14 since these greens are still healing, with a lot of young bent grass seedlings from last fall. The crew has done a great job on cleaning creeks, mulching tee sign areas, and starting to mow rough to clean up dormant material. The dormant Bermuda grass doesn't just turn green again. The green grass is actually new growth from the bottom of the plant. A general rule of thumb (and scientifically proven) is that Bermuda will not reach peak growing potential until the day time high and night time lows  add up to 150. Which in this area  happens about mid to late June. Another big impact on work being accomplished is summer help coming back to work, so you will see some familar faces and some new crew members.









sodding spots # 2 green





new drain # 11 cart path





Alfredo Jr verti -cutting greens







 

ORNAMENTAL LANDSCAPE MAINTENANCE



trimming crape myrtles



The end of February, Thur March is the time to start working on early spring cleanup of our ornamental plantings beds, and large mulch areas. Alfredo Sr. has been doing most of this work. Like trimming crape myrtles, hollies and plants in the parking lot islands. His latest focus is on trimming lirope, and ornamental grass plants that helps provides some contrast in the stark winter landscape. We have also started putting down the pre-emergent weed control in the beds, before adding new pine straw around the club house. This is a big job since we have over 2 acres of bed space just between the club house and golf course.



spot spraying existing weeds and application of pre-emergent



MORE RAIN IN FORECAST

#4 walk bridge under water

Augie checking out #5 flooding

The golf course has held up well despite having around 1.40 " of rain over the past weekend. We missed a flood on Monday for the front side. The Yadkin river was at first forecast to crest at 22.5 ft, but only got to 18.5 feet. So the river only effected #4 walk bridge and along the # 5 cart path. Another rain event is expected Wednesday with more heavy rain moving in overnite.  Unfortunately , the cart path only rule will be in place while the course remains wet. The maintenance staff will continue to repair washout areas in bunkers to make the course as playable as possible. We  have been working on cleaning #18 creek bank and spraying rough  last week. There will still be more clean up in these areas over the next three or four weeks.

U.S. SEASONAL DROUGHT OUTLOOK

Some one asked me today if it was going to be a dry spring and summer. I told them that based on Data from NOAA that it looked very likely for the spring.The following map is the expert assessement for the next  three months. Usually if the drought persist or intensify in these months, it will be a hot dry summer "GREAT". I added a link to the climate prediction center to look at all the maps for temperatures,  preciption, and drought monitor.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

MONDAY NIGHT STORM / GREENS

The Monday night storm bought some wind and heavy rain to the course. But we missed the hail and straight line 60-70 mile winds just to our south. The inch of rain did help the over all 3inch rain deficit that the area has been running. Of course it's extremely wet out there,so carts are restricted to the path and will be for the next several days. The cold weather at night is keeping the soil temperature at 46 degrees average on the greens. We have started to filled the irrigation system this week, so you may see a head or two come on to take out air in the system. The irrigation will be needed to water in applied chemicals on the greens next monday. We expect to find some leaks, that will need to be fixed before the turf season starts as well. Tuesday we had a small hydraulic oil leak with the greens mower on the putting green. A hose burst just as the operator was starting a pass across the green. The mower has a alarm on it that sounds if there a loss in system pressure. So he immediateily stopped and backed off the green. we flushed the oil off the green with water. The damage with hydraulic oil leak is not the oil, but the heat of the oil, it burns the turf. So there will be a strip about 6 inches by 4 feet on the edge of the green. Damage is always hard to determine this time of year since the turf is not growing that much.We have already topdressed it so, it will either fill in,or we will plug it with bent in april during some other scheduled green repair work.