Moving forward

 

Your first false spring is here and at the very least is providing some great golf weather. The bermuda greens look like they are waking up in the mornings and then they look dormant as can be in the afternoons. We will continue mowing them once a week or so and keep the roller on them daily. The bentgrass on the South is enjoying the perfect cool season weather and those greens are rolling nicely. We will have more details next week but remember that the South greens will be aerated on March 16th!

The air temps are more than pleasant for turfgrass growth but the soil temps have months to go before any kind of warm season kicks into gear. Soil temps will be fairly close to the untampered temperature of your pool which right now is hovering in the 50's. Until you are ready to jump in (80 degrees+) then any warm season grass is not going to be moving with any kind of haste. You can see in this picture that around the green on 4 North is greening up slightly. Normal growth is a ways off and the rest of the course will be delayed because of regular pre and postemergent weed control applications.

The greens covers however have been put away and while we still may see a few frosts towards the end of the month the threat of sub 30 degrees is not on any sort of long range forecast.

So we continue making headway on the improvements list. More drainage was added to the beginning of 2 fairway south this week. Spring is tough on the fairways as we fight Poa annua breakthrough and earth worm castings. We may or may not get a mow on the fairways next week in order to just clean them up a bit.

This drain on 2 had a few extra prizes involved. These rocks certainly helps explain why water had a tough time draining downhill here in these swales.

Tree pruning work continued on the south this week. We will keep the lift and the chipper crew going through March until it is time to trade them in for mowing equipment.

Both sides continue to check bunker depths and clean up edges on the bunkers when possible.

One major project that our irrigation techs James and Conner knocked out last week was cleaning the filter screens at the pumphouse. These screens are housed vertically which means opening the hatch on the roof and using a come-a-long to pull them out, not an easy task. This vertical orientation along with not having bypass valves for these filters is a major downfall for the pump station.

The filters were cleaned last July and the pump station has been performing properly ever since. We hope that by cleaning them in March we can get through the season without having to pull them out again.

There is an internal cleaning mechanism that is supposed to keep the filters functional but they still get caked up with silt and debris that comes through Carmel lake. 

The guys got the screens back to brand new condition and reinstalled them. We are ready to go!

Finally this week we bid 10 year veteran Eric Downs farewell as he moves upstream to dial in Tega Cay Golf Club as Director of Agronomy. Eric has a great team in place here on the North and we could not be more appreciative for his contributions over the years. We know he will do well at Tega and we wish him well!

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