Cranking up some off season work

 


Boomer was back looking for shade today as temperatures head to 70 again. 27 degrees on Tuesday morning was easily the coldest it has been in 7 or 8 months. The top layer of the greens were frozen and the bunkers had a short lived crust on them. The sun and normal temps are back now and so long as you are out of the wind you will have great conditions through the weekend.


The South was closed on Monday so after a successful Member Member event over the weekend we were ready to dig in to some drainage.


A quick warm up of things to come this winter, this smaller drain was put in on the left of 6 fairway before the fairway bunkers. The sod is removed, soil trenched and taken away then gravel, pipe and sand are installed to wick water away faster through this swale. We will continue working through chronically wetter areas this winter, especially landing zones and cart entry points.


Not to be outdone the North fixed a broken drain in 11 fairway and then installed a larger line just underneath the last right fairway bunker. This is a high traffic area for carts and golf play that will now be much drier through the season.

We are also starting to get moving on some in house tree work for the off season. Above are the guidelines that we work through as a department and with the Greens and Grounds committee to evaluate each tree for removal or pruning. These are common sense guidelines that keep turf health and quality of golf paramount.


As we work through both courses the higher priorities are unhealthy trees like this ash on 6 south. There are plenty of trees that pose a danger to both golfers and staff that will keep us busy for a while. We will take most of the tree work on ourselves this winter but will have a stump grinding company come in periodically to grind stumps as the final step.


Another easy example for tree removal are these two gum trees on 6 North. These trees are on the north side of the hole, blocking sunlight to a cart entry point. They are also in poor condition and are a serious nuisance because of their gum balls. These are simple trees to remove in order to improve the golf hole.


Our one mechanic Scott has been hard at work this week fabricating us a chipper box trailer. This trailer will be used for tree work all throughout the property and will allow us to easily chip up trees at the site of the removal and haul off the wood chips.


The leaf drop Armageddon continues, especially around the clubhouse. A beefed up team on Monday got after the leaves in the parking lot and restored some order. You should see an email coming out soon detailing some asphalt work here in the parking lot for next week.


We can't go a week without mentioning something about the bunkers. While the South got new rakes last year the North was left behind. New rakes are budgeted for the North course early next year.


North Course Assistant Superintendent Alex Hastings has now left us behind and is heading to Greenville Country Club to be the superintendent of their Riverside course. Alex has certainly left his mark here at Carmel and we wish him well!

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